


Waiting on the World to Change

by Ember Nickel (primeideal)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Challenge Response, Gen, Quidditch, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 41
Words: 47,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/Ember%20Nickel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Officially, I'm a halfblood. Officially, I'm Scottish. Officially, I didn't accidentally wind up here from three years in the future. The official story is wrong. Seriously, my dad hasn't been to Scotland since Hogwarts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bad Timing

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the minor characters' Time-traveller fic challenge on HPFC (Fanfiction.Net). Updates are every Wednesday.

"Do you ever regret how your life's gone?"

I turned around to see Pucey, an equipment box tucked underneath his arm, looking so serious that I did a double-take. "What kind of a question is that? No."

"Sorry. Didn't want to...you know, I just...was, er, thinking about...a couple things that didn't work out quite as well as I would've hoped, and, I don't know, you just get philosophical sometimes." He shrugged a blue robe against the gray sky.

"Maybe you do," I said shortly, "but I don't, and anyway, aren't you getting married next week?"

He laughed. "Hopefully that's not what brought this on."

"Awwwkay," bellowed Jenkins as she made her way out of the dressing room, Firebolt in tow. "Laps!"

That was Jenkins for you. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Seekers very rarely make good captains. Most of the best I've seen on other teams are Chasers, who are actually good at working alongside their teammates. Seekers, though, at this level? Are mostly concentrating on doing their own thing, not understanding how to design actual practices that involve the whole team.

And yes, they say that about Keepers too.

Point being, nothing much interesting happened for the first fifteen minutes of practice, because Jenkins the Sage was making us do laps. This meant that I had time to brood, as if I didn't do enough of that already, about what Pucey had said.  _Did_  I regret how my life had gone?

It was a dumb question, but I had given the right answer. No. I was lucky. I was alive. My family was alive, and we expected to stay that way. That was more than a lot of people could say.

Plus, Puddlemere had just finished runners-up, and consequently qualified for the European Cup, so that was something, too.

This obviously doesn't mean I was pleased about the way the last couple years had gone. I'm not a fan of people being killed...everywhere, especially  _all over Britain_ , and fearing for my family's safety kept me on edge. Plus, the Ministry's policies, if you'll pardon my language, were kind of...

Well, never mind that, that's an insult to perfectly functional body parts.

It was easier to stay put. Once or twice a couple of my old friends...no, not friends, I missed them too little. Acquaintances, dropped by and tried to tell me to make a fight of it. I told them I was used to putting up with stupid rules. I mean, come on. 150 points for a Snitch is completely disproportionate.

They didn't take it well.

I understood. Some of them  _couldn't_  put up with the rules. But for them, being carted off by the Commission or getting blown up in a fight were about equally bad options. They might as well have tried...something. I had a life to live out.

It had been over two years since the Week of Shadows, closer to three since Thicknesse took over. We were finally starting to see the promised peak in talent that had followed the massive decline in play since a quarter of the league got...arrested and even more players dropped out to go on strike. I was fortunate—well, skillful enough to have been promoted to the first team before all of that, right when Bruce got traded, but only by a couple of weeks. Any later and I'd have been left asking whether I really got my place on talent alone, and then they would have been a rough couple of years.  _That_  was good fortune, as far as timing goes.

Finally, Jenkins whistled to call us out of the air. The Beaters would practice "juggling" Bludgers (not literally, of course), while the rest of us practiced our actual skills. Jenkins proudly informed us that she'd put the special spells on the field herself to simulate the special, fanciful conditions of the European Cup. There was the golden, visible but intangible, line in the air that marked the pitch boundary from above. There were the silver lines that did the same for the edge of the scoring area. There were the time charms on the goalposts that would—in principle—mark the exact time of the goals to sync with the magical scoreboard.

I know what you're wondering. You're wondering if I had any bad feeling. Any intuition that something was off.

The total and honest truth was, yes. Yes, I did. I was a little...not bitter, just darkly amused at the way of the world that the most exciting and top-line research in the wizarding world was going towards fancy spells for  _showing off Quidditch pitches_.

Not that Quidditch isn't important, of course. It's just that, you know, the players at European Cup level should be able to see where the pitch boundaries are. I guess it was for the fans.

But that was my only reaction, and we started playing. Of course Jenkins could do her own thing, the rest of us had a while to practice on our own before the Beaters would come out. These conditions aren't really good for simulating a game—it's much better when the reserves are mixed in—as you lose the feel of your opponents going against you. So the pace is all off. The Chasers can try passing to each other, yeah, but there's nothing stopping them from just shooting towards goal. Of course, that kept me busy.

You can see how I don't do as well during that situation as I would in a normal game. Despite this, I was really on top of my game just then. The first shot was low, and I swooped down between the goalposts to pass it up to the Chasers and start the cycle again. The next, I caught on the fly and threw it back out to them. Two for two so far, pretty good, maybe I was a little more keyed up than usual to keep the streak going.

Then came the third shot.

I was just hanging out, literally, when the Quaffle came streaking towards the opposite post. Hastily, I angled toward it, and began backing up so I could get between it and the goal. Backing up. Backing up some more. I wasn't looking where I was going. Maybe if I had...

Instead, the bristle end of my broom passed through the post, and I heard a sizzling sound from behind me. There was no time to react—I was following it. One moment, I was suspended inside the circle of the goalpost, feeling like I'd just gotten a really painful shock. The rest of the circle seemed to shine with a bright blue light.

And then, utter darkness.

In retrospect, they probably never got the Quaffle back, either.


	2. Ahead Of My Time

I woke up.

I was sore, very sore, but on the other hand it was just sort of a general, achy, all-over-my-body soreness—not the sharp pain of the shock I was pretty sure I had just gone through.

My arms were wrapped around my broom, and I was lying on...grass. The grass of a Quidditch pitch.

Oh. Yeah. I'd just fallen from the goalposts, somehow managed to stay on my broom the entire time, probably been unconscious for a while, and my teammates...

had...

abandoned me.

"Jenkins?" I called out. I was face-up, so my mouth was still working pretty well.

I tried to pull myself to my feet, but that didn't exactly happen. I could loose my sweaty hands from the broom, and dump it off to the side of me, which was progress, but at the same time I was still on the ground.

Wait, there was a way to fix that. I reached for my broom, but before I could try  _flying_  off the pitch, started worrying about whether I had my wand on me. Nervous, I reached down my robe with my right hand (which  _really_  hurt), but found, luckily, that I'd tucked it under my robes. I hadn't always done that, but the last few years, one couldn't be too careful.

Okay, so, I was alive,  _and_  I had my wand and broomstick with me. Though I wouldn't have minded actually being able to stand up, one couldn't ask for much more.

"Jenkins?" I called again. "Pucey? Anybody here?"

"Hello?" came a familiar voice. "Who's that?"

"It's me. Oliver. I'm out on the pitch, can you help me?"

"Practice already? Am I late?" Who  _was_  that? I was almost certain it wasn't anyone on the team, and yet...

"I don't know. I can't get up, I fell and it hurts all over, can you help please?"

"Hold on."

I waited a nervous minute—there wasn't much else to do—and then saw a familiar blond head come out of the dressing room. A few (of his) steps later, I was shocked. Not as shocked as I'd just been, granted, but shocked nonetheless.

" _Larsson_?" I gaped. "How long have  _you_  been here?"

"Uh...fifteen minutes? I come to look at pitch." Yep, that was definitely him.

"No, I mean, how long have you been here in Britain?"

"Uh...two months?"

"Two  _months_? How long have I been unconscious?"  _And why hasn't someone moved me off this pitch?_

"I don't know." He looks furtive. "I come here, hear you yell, so I come out..."

"Okay. Well. Okay." It was getting to be too much to deal with. "Are you any good at healing spells?"

"For a little blood, yes...but you aren't bleeding. Do you think your bones broke?"

"Maybe. Can you give me a hand, help me up?"

He did, looking at me with a little concern. Maybe that was a mistake, as I really didn't feel like I could take much of a step, and quickly sat back down.

"You should go to hospital," he pointed out.

Understatement of the day. "Yeah. Okay. Maybe you can...Larsson, what about  _you_? You've been here for two  _months_? You need to get back to the continent, soon. Can you fly to France, maybe?"

"Fly to France? Why?"

"They don't allow Muggle-borns in the league or...or...anywhere."

He stared at me, and then asked, quietly, "Oliver, you...fall off broom. From how high?"

"It wasn't off my broom!" I retorted. "I mean, I fell down. But I stayed on my broom."

"From how high?" he repeated.

"The top of the goalposts."

"Okay. Did you...hit your head?"

"Well, yeah. Probably. You're right, I have to go to St. Mungo's, I will in a minute."

"You...mess up head, I think," he said, genuinely nervous. "Muggle-borns can play in the league. Many of them. Becky too, and many reserves for this team."

"Becky. Becky  _Parker_?  _She's_  back?"

"Yes," he nodded.

"Okay. Okay. Larsson? What, um. What day is it? I, I think I did have some memory issues. Just...help me out here, what's the date?"

"30th of July," he said.

30th of July. Well, I figured, that was enough time for the Ministry to completely change its tune.

Except...

except even my teammates would, hopefully, not have left me on the  _pitch_  the entire time.

30th of July, and Larsson had been back in Britain for two whole months.

No.

Unless...

"Larsson," I said, and tried not to look like a totally helpless invalid (which was difficult), "what  _year_?"

"1997."

I couldn't help it. I rolled over onto my (hopefully intact) ribs and vomited up that morning's breakfast.

Or, rather, what was left of breakfast from almost three full years previously.

"I'm really not feeling well," I grinned.

"I know that. What is going on?"

"Um."

I'd just gone three years into the past. And somewhere, there was another, three-years-younger version of me, who clearly never knew he was going to go back in time, because...I'd...remember it now, wouldn't I? And if today was a practice day, he was going to show up, not having broken any bones and not knowing that this conversation had happened.

I could make up a cover story about having preexisting memory issues, to explain away the fact that the original version of me wouldn't remember anything. Or, I could come out with the truth.

If it had been Jenkins that would be one thing, but this was Larsson in the flesh. But for how long? "I just traveled back in time from the future."

"Time travel? That's not possible."

"Well, here I am. Listen, Larsson, get me to St. Mungo's—the hospital—and then you have to get out of the country, okay? Bring Parker. You have about a day or two to leave, and then the Ministry is going to start coming after you."

He looked me up and down. "You're so young."

"Eh?"

"When did you come from?"

"I probably shouldn't say that. But long enough to know, you and Parker need to leave, now."

He shook his head. I guess I wouldn't be sure of what to believe, either. "First I get you to hospital."

"That sounds like a good idea," I admitted. I was trying to remember when Larsson and Parker had actually left, but couldn't. This was the longest conversation I'd had with the Beater, and it wasn't even the real me.

"Okay. I will Apparate you to my house, then we take the Floo to hospital?"

"Sounds good," I said.

The Apparition was uncomfortable, but no more than I had been. "Go ahead and send Parker an owl now, I'm in no hurry."

"We can be quick. St. Mungo's, it's called?"

"Yes."

Fortunately, the Floo trip went off without incident, even though Larsson insisted on me lying flat for the whole thing. "I can check myself in," I said. "Go, find Parker. Now."

He nodded.

"And Larsson?"

"Yes?"

I wasn't sure why I added this, but since I'd never heard of anyone traveling through time before, I figured I had to. "Don't tell anyone how I got here, okay?"

He glanced at me. I must have looked threatening, still horizontal on the lobby floor, clutching my broom.

"Okay," he finally said, and Disapparated.

"Next?" called the Welcome Witch.

Half-crawling, I pulled myself forward. "Hi."

"Hello?" she smiled.

"Er, hello," I said. "I...er...My broom crashed."

She stepped around the desk to smile down at me. "I see. And how did you get here? It's dangerous to move until you know what kind of a condition you're in."

"Sorry," I said. "A...a friend Side-Along Apparated me to his house, and then we took the Floo. Don't worry, I haven't tried to put any weight on my legs."

"That's good," she said. "We'll have some Healers patch you up."

"Great."

She turned her attention to a couple of witches who seemed to have gotten affixed to each other, but a minute later, a couple assistants came along with a stretcher, which they levitated me onto.

"Excuse me, uh, sir," called the witch. "What's your name?"

I thought very, very fast.

"Fergus Bailey," I said. As the stretcher was levitated down the hall, I yelled, "But I think my  _real_  name is Fergus  _Wood_."


	3. No True Scotsman

So, there's probably something I should explain about myself.

I was born, and lived until I went to Hogwarts, in a tiny town in South West England. You're thinking of Piddletrenthide. Smaller.

Anyway, my Mum's family is from Upper Flagley, my Dad's is also from Dorset. I could go back and name-drop some other English towns, but that shouldn't be necessary. The point is, I'm English as in England—which doesn't matter except at World Cup time, and barely even  _then—_ but I'm definitely not  _Scottish_.

Everyone always assumes that. I don't mind, but I really don't know why. Nothing against them. It's just that  _I_ am  _not_.

As I was shuttled down the hallway into a hospital room, I started thinking about the half-extant cover story I'd leaped into. I couldn't claim to be part of an actual wizarding family that wouldn't recognize me. If it were much earlier, I could claim to be a Muggle-born wizard, but in about two days that would be a really bad idea and I had no idea how long I was going to stay in St. Mungo's. I couldn't exactly go around claiming to be Oliver Wood, twenty, just promoted to the first team and in full health. Unless I explained that I was actually from the future.

And, for some reason, I didn't want to do that. Yeah, it'd be a little fun to bet on the next few seasons' worth of Quidditch games. But—again in about two days—there'd be a whole lot of people who'd probably want to know how the future played out. Most of them were kind of creepy, and not the type of people I'd want to deal too closely with. The others—well, I didn't mind their company so much. I just didn't think I'd have it in me to disappoint them.

Which really didn't leave me with many options, bar perhaps the one I was still frantically polishing off. I figured an overly-Scottish name wouldn't hurt. For once I'd be what people expected...even if it was a complete lie.

Once I got settled in, someone cast a numbing spell on me. All things being equal I don't like depending on magic to patch up my injuries, I'm used to playing through pain, but it didn't look like I was getting on a broomstick any time soon and it wasn't like I'd ever gotten an injury quite like that before.

I was given several potions to drink, and, after maybe half an hour of spellwork (it's always a bit creepy when they  _look_  at you with magic that way), a prognosis—I'd broken way too many bones, although my head hadn't been damaged, and would probably be in hospital for a week if not two.

So no chance of getting to the Ministry or anyone who could help with the time-travel thing before things went to pot there. Something also told me that a mysterious wizard who'd fallen from the sky was not going to avoid the Ministry's attention long.

I was right. On the fourth of August, a couple Ministry...lugs showed up in my hospital room. It was almost a good thing I'd been injured, as I didn't fancy having this conversation in their headquarters.

"You are...Fergus Bailey?" the one on the left asked.

"That's me name," I said, with the most outrageous accent I could muster that didn't seem completely faked.

"And you have...obtained this wand?"

Great. This was a test to see if I was a good wizard or a Mudblood, but I was probably going to fail it for completely the wrong reason. If they knew it belonged to Oliver Wood...

"It was with me when I came to," I said. "After the accident, I mean. I think it's mine, I haven't had a look—not much need to do spellwork on my own."

"I see. And your parents' names?"

This was where it was going to get interesting. "My mum's name is Mary," I said. Most generic name I could think of. Hopefully there wouldn't be just one Scottish Mary Bailey to track down. "Mary Bailey."

"Maiden name?"

"That's it," I sighed. "She...never married."

"Occupation?"

"Teacher."

"I...see. And your father?"

"That's the question, isn't it? He didn't...stay around to tell me. But," I rushed before he could say anything more, "last summer I got curious, and I've asked questions. He'd dropped enough hints to my mum, before he left, and she's told me everything. I've met with other wizards and I'm sure I've pieced it together. My father's name is Brian Wood, of Dorset in England."

"And his occupation?"

I couldn't tell whether they actually believed me or were just following protocol. "Cauldron repair."

The other man began scribbling something down, while the first one kept talking to me. "And did you ever make contact with him?"

"No. Well, yes, but I haven't told him who I am."

"How convenient," drawled the second.

Before I could reply, the first one asked, "What house were you in at Hogwarts?"

"Didn't go. My mum wanted me brought up in the Muggle world, but I've picked up a bit here and there from the different wizards I've met."

"What's  _your_  occupation?"

"I work in the Muggle world. Er. Bookseller. I've applied for a job at Flourish and Blotts, didn't get it though."

"Perhaps," said the second, "there are more...vacancies on the staff, now."

"That'd be brilliant," I said without thinking about what that really meant. If I couldn't get back to my own time, I needed a job. I couldn't exactly sneak Galleons out of my real vault without the younger version of myself catching on, not unless I wanted to replace them with leprechaun gold or something, and as well hope to get back to 2000 as track a leprechaun down.

"Once," said the first, irritated, "you have demonstrated Blood Status."

"D'you want me to answer questions about the Wood family or what?" The second one raised his eyebrows as if realizing that that was a mistake—I'd been in there for a week, how should I have known what was going on in the outside world? But the first one shrugged, reaching for a briefcase at his feet and ruffling through for a sheet near the end.

Of course, I answered every question correctly. "I was really curious," I shrugged at the end—or tried to. The numbing charm was wearing off, and my arms kind of hurt. "I didn't want to reveal myself, I felt it was too long ago to make a difference. But—they're my family, I wanted to  _know_."

The first one smiled. "An understandable motive, Fergus."

The second one still seemed unconvinced. I reached for my trump card. "Everyone tells me I look just like Oliver—Brian's son with his wife." I forced a weak smile. "I guess that makes him my half-brother."

I didn't have to fake the weird face I made.

That was enough to get them to leave—or bother someone the next floor up. Presumably they tracked down a photo of me in the Quidditch program or wherever and realized yes, the resemblance was quite uncanny. I tried to write a letter, but my arm hurt, I didn't know what to say, and I couldn't trust anyone to dictate it.

_Dear Dad,_

_Be careful._

No.  _I had to—_

No.  _This is, um, this is—_

_Don't listen to..._

Three days after they came to visit, I got a small identification card.  _Fergus Wood_ ,  _Half-blood_ , it read. The next day, I was released.


	4. Of Robes And Pants

It didn't happen as easily as all that, of course. There was the small matter of payment. Say what you will about St. Mungo's being on the Ministry dime, the place isn't cheap.

And, once again, I was forced to confront the fact that Fergus Bailey/Wood had no savings, no job, nor for that matter a home. "All my savings are in Muggle money," I explained with a Spellotaped smile. "There was a bloke I trusted to change me currency, but he's been...er, you know." The Welcome Witch kept a cool face. I wondered whether she knew, or was just that calm about things. "I didn't really have much to do with the wider wizarding world before the broom accident, but I'm hoping to get a job in Diagon Alley soon. I'll pay you back what I have, as soon as I start earning a living."

For a chipper Welcome Witch, she had a pretty paranoid glare.

"Which I plan to do soon. I've heard Diagon Alley is hiring."

"Perhaps," she said, "you could leave something behind as collateral."

"I'm not _—_ "  _taking a loan out_ , I began, but...in some sense I kind of was. "...giving up my wand."

"How about that broomstick?"

I had no idea whether, or how well, it still worked. It would be a wrench to part with, but on the other hand, it was essentially that or the clothes on my back.

"All right," I finally said. "I'll send money along as soon as I can."

With that, I Apparated to Diagon Alley, feeling pretty good considering. Despite my grumbling, the Healers had earned their pay. Figured my worst career injury would come on a day I didn't even have a game.

Diagon Alley was pretty packed. Families trying to get their children's school supplies _—_ yes, that was the year they'd made Hogwarts attendance mandatory. There were ministry officials putting up posters, but it looked less like a new regime and more like half-organized chaos. Inside Flourish and Blotts, the thin staff was struggling to keep order. I heard two teenagers muttering behind me.

"Muggle Studies is mandatory? But I just got my list, and it said it was a third-year elective."

"It's a new thing. But this book is ancient, there's nothing in there about eckletronics or anything."

And, behind me, a tiny eleven-year-old.

"Elementary wandwork? But they took my wand away."

"Excuse me," said one of the workers. "Someone took your wand away?"

"Uh-huh. I got it last week but then some big man took it away."

"Well, I'm sorry, miss, but only witches and wizards have wands. If you don't have one, you must not be a witch."

"Is this really the time?" I blurted. "I mean, there's a huge line waiting at the desk."

"Who are you?" snapped the employee.

"Fergus Bailey. I'm here about the job application."

"Which one?" he said shortly. "Pick your favorite."

"Anything," I said. Maybe this was a mistake.

"How soon can you start?"

"Right now."

"Blood Status?"

"Half."

"Your card?"

I rummaged to look for my pocket _—_ I was wearing my Puddlemere robes turned inside out. I'd worn hospital robes at the hospital, but tried to keep these out of sight.

With the employee growing nervous, I finally retrieved my card with the half-blood's blue rectangle. He glanced at it, then cast a couple charms on it. The whole card flashed bright blue a couple times, then faded.

"Start another check-out line," he said, "If you're pants, we'll find out, and you'll be gone."

"How much do I make?"

"We'll sort that out once we see if you're pants."

Such confidence they placed in me.

29 Knuts to the Sickle, 17 Sickles to the Galleon. Have I mentioned that I'm really used to working with multiples of ten?

I found some scratch paper and just started adding everything up by hand, double-checking the totals. I sort of expected people to be annoyed at how slow I was, but that was far from the case. Not that they seemed pleased, either _—_ people were just generally sullen.

I was able to get a look at the titles as I went. The Transfiguration books looked like the same as always _—_ that'd be Professor McGonagall's class, nobody could faze her. Charms was Professor Flitwick, the half-breed was still on staff. There  _were_  lots of Muggle Studies books, I thought, and they  _did_  look pretty out of date. I couldn't see much in the way of texts for Defense Against the Dark Arts, and wondered if they had anyone to teach the class. They'd probably be going after Muggle-borns on the faculty, too.

I got hungry, but tuned that out _—_ nobody seemed to be taking breaks, and I wanted to make a good impression my first day on the job. It must have been several hours before a fat witch I assumed was my boss told me I could go "out" for lunch.

"Out?" I numbly repeated. "What is lunch?"

"You're in Diagon Alley, get whatever you want," she snapped.

Right. "Er. How long do I have? Until I should come back?"

She looked me up and down. "Who are you?"

"Fergus Bailey. Fergus Wood is what I go by, now, it's—"

"I checked him out," said the wizard I'd talked to before. "Beggars can't be choosers at this point, can they? With Meg and Davey and them—"

"I'm well aware," snapped the witch. "All right...Fergus, we'll take you on." Seemed a bit belated, but I wasn't going to say anything. "Take half an hour, then get back here."

I'd go home, I decided. Get food there. Tell my parents everything. Tell them that, although the next few years would be dangerous, we'd all make it through without incident. That way, my dad wouldn't be surprised if he heard the news about "Bailey." Not that he'd ever believe it. I don't know if he'd ever  _been_  to Scotland since Hogwarts. Honestly, the ideas of some people...

I Apparated upstairs. No sense knocking and causing a scare—this was August 1997, and I vaguely remembered my parents being extra-cautious at the beginning of Thicknesse' term. Even though they had nothing to hide, apparently they'd been really paranoid about security for a few weeks.

"Oliver?" my mom called.

"Coming!" I yelled.

"Go look upstairs. Bring your wand, it sounded like someone  _Apparating_."

Wait. Wait a minute. She didn't know I was here...how could she, I hadn't come downstairs yet! So she hadn't been talking to me.

Which meant that another version of me was already here.

And since I definitely never remembered running into my older self upstairs at my parents' house...

that meant I had to get out of there before I saw myself.

 _Well_ , I thought as the darkness of Apparition set in,  _this would certainly explain why they worried about break-ins._


	5. Of Fliers And Fliers

So maybe I could've dropped into the Leaky Cauldron. Maybe even passed myself off as Oliver Wood, soon to be starting for Puddlemere, in hopes of landing a free meal. But how to keep track of who had seen me? And wouldn't the Quidditch jock be expected to pay his own way?

I didn't think it would make sense to hang out somewhere they were serving food I couldn't eat. If window-shopping was my fate, might as well window-shop for something really cool.

Which brought me to Quality Quidditch Supplies.

Having actually  _come_  from 2000, the fact that they had a few Nimbus 2000s still in stock was pretty amusing. They had some Comet 300s, which I stared at for a while—I had left a Comet 310 at St. Mungo's.

And then, as I figured it was about time to head to Flourish and Blotts, I caught sight of a flier.

A "wanted" ad? Sure, there were some outside, for the terrorists, but I couldn't imagine anyone they'd be expecting Quidditch players to root out. It was barely August; the strike hadn't started yet.

One advantage to time travel, I supposed, was that I could drop in on people who hadn't appeared to stick around long enough to blab. Larsson, Parker, and the other Muggle-borns I had known were hopefully out of the country or on the run. But maybe if I timed it right, I could say goodbye to the Weasley brothers without them knowing it. With luck, even Harry Potter—I'd known him before all those "Chosen One" rumors.

The only one of my school teammates I saw anymore—whatever "anymore" meant—was Katie Bell. After the Week of Shadows she decided that what she wanted was to stay away from resistance but give the resistors something to fight for. She married at nineteen, to a man who couldn't have been more than twenty. Last time I saw them, she was very pregnant with twins.

I was halfway through reading the poster, only half-attentive, when I realized that there was no picture on it. It wasn't a Wanted sign at all.

I jumped back to the top, starting over.

_Are you an expert flier? Knowledgeable of the rules of Quidditch? Good at working with young people?_

Two for the first two. The third was a bit of a stretch—I'd been captain of my school team when I had at least two years on everyone else, though, and that had to count for something.

 _Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seeks a flying instructor and Quidditch referee for employment effective September 1. The instructor will receive compensation for educational expenses, and a respectable salary. Room and board are available; alternatively, the salary may be augmented as per negotiations. Yearly duties include teaching flying lessons, refereeing six Quidditch games, and other administrative tasks as assigned._  Tasks as assigned? Room and board? I supposed Madam Hooch had a relatively small teaching load compared to the other professors, and I'd never really thought about where the professors slept.

So did this mean Hooch had retired? She was pretty old, even for a witch. I glanced at the bottom of the flier.  _Certification of Blood Status is desirable. Address owls of application to Severus Snape, Headmaster._

Headmaster Snape, huh?

I couldn't honestly say it had a particularly nice ring to it.

The prospect of room and board was fantastic. Plus, while the Ministry felt like a slightly overwhelming place for a time-traveller to hang out, the Hogwarts library was huge. If I wanted answers, I could probably find them there as well as anywhere. And I was almost certainly the most qualified candidate...even if Fergus Bailey didn't have a resume.

Maybe it was a little ungrateful of me to try for a new job before I'd really officially gotten the old one. But Flourish and Blotts seemed a very disorganized place, and I couldn't remember where in Diagon Alley would be legitimately safe to stay in over the next three years. At least Hogwarts would be fine. It always was.

The Hogwarts books were older, and a little meaner—at Flourish and Blotts, I'd checked out a whole line of people and had only been bitten once. A bit of spirit was good in books. Particularly if the Ministry started coming after them. Not that there could be anything seditious in theoretical treatises on time travel, assuming they existed. But one couldn't be too careful, these coming months.

So I figured I'd apply. Once I got quill and parchment. Thinking of quill and parchment reminded me I didn't have any food, and that reminded me I had to go back to work.

Again, I checked out the books as I was...checking out the books. A boring, Ministry-approved year at Hogwarts seemed to be in store. I didn't see very many other purchases, bar a couple copies of  _The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore_  and some cheap magazines with celebrity gossip.

The crowds weren't that big, so it didn't feel like the store needed that many staff members to get by. But all the same, it just felt really disorganized. That or the weird noises coming from outside were distracting me. To say nothing of the weird noises coming from my stomach.

By dinner time, I was ready to go. My boss finally said I could leave, before finally asking me what shift I actually  _wanted_.

"It doesn't," I began, and then stopped, an idea forming. "Actually. Could I take  _night_  shifts? Starting tomorrow night."

"How late were you thinking?"

"Whenever you needed me. Overnight would be great."

"We're only open till eleven. But I could put you on a four to eleven shift."

Four to eleven...wouldn't exactly accomplish what I had in mind. "How much is the salary? Does it matter which shift? And, for that matter, when do I get paid? Not that—I mean—" I broke off. Truthfully, I  _was_  in a rush. But it didn't seem appropriate to tell her that.

"Payday is alternate Fridays, so a week from now." Great. "Independent of shift, as long as you're working full-time." She made me the offer. I accepted, numbly, but a week without any payment? I'd have to try my risky backup plan, and send off that owl quickly.

It was a little before five. It'd be close. Maybe too close. I could shrug off the hunger for the rest of the day if I pushed myself, but the whole next morning?

 _I should get some parchment anyway,_  I told myself.

So I Apparated to my own street corner.

My house—the dark red one, third on the left—wasn't that big, but it was pretty nice. Most importantly, I thought as I nervously walked up towards it, it seemed to be completely empty. But what did that mean? Maybe I was reading in the dark.

_Okay, I'll knock, and then if I hear footsteps, I'll start running..._

I knocked. And hoped the neighbors didn't see. Well, I could always be the half-brother coming to introduce himself...until they asked Oliver about that. Never mind.

Nobody answered. So I Apparated in.

I gulped down a sandwich. Then I gulped down another one. Then I gulped down half of a third before worrying that I'd have literally no time to prepare if Oliver Apparated in. Or had this all already definitely happened without him seeing me, in which case, I was fine? I took another bite. I gulped down the rest. Hopefully I wouldn't pay as much attention to the amount of bread left in the bread bag as I did to my Gringotts account.

I poked around until I found a quill and parchment. I only had one or two quills, but I figured I'd put that quill back when I came back for my next meal. I Apparated back to Flourish and Blotts, then climbed to a dark corner and started writing. I didn't have any idea if there were employees-only areas. Nor, for that matter, did I have a uniform.

I wished I could go flying. Not because a broom would be yet another nice luxury to have around that I didn't have, but because when I fly sometimes I can get in a "zone" and tune out everything. It's like I don't really pay attention to anything, don't really think about anything, don't know who I am—fitting enough. It would take my mind of my problems, which felt like they were piling up. The physical stuff I could tune out—in my condition, a day or two wouldn't make much difference. But the uncertainty was wearing on me.

_Dear Profess..._

No.

_Dear Headmaster Snape,_

_I saw that Hogwarts was seeking to hire a new flying instructor. My name is Fergus..._

Another thing I didn't have? Was an  _owl_.


	6. Time Magic

So began an extremely awkward week.

I worked at Flourish and Blotts from four to eleven. My coworkers were by and large surly people. I guess I came off the same way. We spoke little. I said maybe ten words to them Monday and Tuesday combined, five of which were "Er, where's the bathroom again?" The sixth was "Thanks." Wednesday I'd worked up the courage to borrow an owl from one of them. It bit me. The owl, I mean. Not my coworker. But I got the letter sent off, so it was worth it.

I slept in my bed, very fitfully, from nine to three or so, eating two decent-sized meals before and after. Sometimes I slept a couple hours at night above the store, although I spent most of my free time trying to track down any books about time travel. The only remotely promising lead was some old-timey book about how "while many have striven to alter what is past, the Magick of the Hour Glass remains beyond the power of all but a few Warlocks." So maybe hourglasses were the key to it. Or maybe someone was just bitter about losing points for their Hogwarts house and not being able to do anything about it.

I wasn't eating that much of anything, so nothing too messy for my robes. I'm not very good at household spells, so while I tried to cast a generic  _Scourgify_ every once in a while, I couldn't tell if it was working. Not that I cared much. It was the boxers that were really annoying. I borrowed a couple pairs from the self who belonged there, but not very often. He'd get confused when he did the laundry...

It sounds pretty bad when I tell it this way. I mean, it was. But there were probably people going through worse.

Finally, an hour before paytime, the owl arrived. For a second, I just stared at it. Not that I'd forgotten why it was addressed to Fergus or anything, I just  _stared_.

"What's the matter?" snapped the first employee I'd met. "Never seen an owl before?"

I grunted, and took the letter. He had—accidentally, I really hoped—a point. It was the first letter ever sent to Fergus Wood. The name, printed on the front, seemed to have some kind of existence all its own.

I took it. A cursory form letter inviting me to an interview the following Tuesday. I eagerly sent the owl back, while hoping my coworker wouldn't see what I was up to. I was pretty giddy when I got my pay, so maybe that made me look sort of normal.

Two weeks to make that last, plus whatever I was sending to St. Mungo's. Maybe I could keep sleeping in my bed, but I wasn't really getting enough sleep then. At any rate, I certainly deserved a proper meal.

The guy at the Leaky Cauldron did a double-take when I placed my order. I guess he wasn't used to men my age showing up on their own past eleven at night, completely sober, and not ordering any alcohol to go with their huge pile of food. I've never felt the need to try it, really. Besides, water was cheap, and cheap was good.

He offered me a room, and I didn't refuse. Guess I should've. I didn't get out of bed until after one the next day, by which time I had to pay for two nights.

"Sorry, kid," he shrugged. "Gotta be careful with your time."

You're telling  _me._ I figured I'd stay there the next night as well, make it count. Sunday mornings I got up at a decent hour anyway.

It was Saturday, so I went back to Flourish and Blotts and started reading. Got some funny looks, maybe because I was still wearing that inside-out robe. Disappointing lack of results. One witch speculated that time-travel "should be possible" (no, really?); another warlock mentioned that his friends at the Ministry were keeping tight-lipped. That book had nothing to do with it really, I was just following some cool-looking footnotes and wound up rereading  _He Flew Like a Madman_. So...that took most of the afternoon.

I decided I should probably get fresh robes for the interview, so I purchased some at Madam Malkin's. That and some spare boxers.

The research wasn't all fruitless, mind you—I did find some "time charms" much less complex than the one Jenkins so utterly botched on the goalposts. I practiced on my sheets until they turned cold at a specified time, then set an alarm for the next morning.

I usually visited a Speakable in my hometown, so no chance of dropping in there, but maybe the barman could give me a recommendation? He laughed bitterly.

"Er, Lydia Macmillan has a big crowd, I supposed. She's on the Floo Network if you'd like."

"That'd be brilliant," I said, too hastily.

You've probably heard that laity who are open to women Speakables tend to be a bit more...open-minded than people who'd never consider it. (Ryan Howell's the name of the one I visited back home, but there'd been a woman there before that.)

Don't believe the hype.

Okay, so after three years of being warned about Mudbloods and their risks, I knew the spiel. Purity of blood, purity of magic, and...da da dah. What I didn't expect to hear was the  _Speakable_ spewing it. I mean, it was still August of '97. The crowd was huge, and they were practically drooling at her every word.

When I went up for Gratiara, I was really distracted, and praying on my own for Ministry workers who were  _calmer_  than that. I know, I know. I came from the future. I should have known what we would get.

By autumn of '98 I'd stopped following politics. Too depressing.


	7. Of Qualifications and Quidditch

The interview was scheduled for mid-morning, thankfully, so I'd have time to fit it in before work. I Apparated to Hogsmeade, then walked to Hogwarts—a longer walk than I remembered from school.

I'd never been to Hogwarts during the summer, and was a little surprised that I could just open the door and walk on in. But I was quickly baffled, again, by the moving staircases, and had to ask a tall, snooty ghost which way to the headmaster's office. I caught sight of Nearly Headless Nick out of the corner of my eye as I was walking, and then started taking the stairs two at a time—for some reason, it felt like the ghosts might recognize me.

I knocked on the door, and within moments, Professor Snape was there. "Hello," he said.

"Hello." I offered a hand to shake. "I'm Fergus Bailey, or Wood, I'm here about the flying instructor position."

"I am aware of my interviewing schedule," he glared, looking me over carefully. I tried to stay calm. Fergus had never met the Headmaster.

"So," he began, taking a seat, "why should I offer the position to someone without any qualifications whatsoever?"

This would be fun. "I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for as far as qualifications go, sir. I went to a Muggle university for a couple of years—I'm sure that that doesn't offer me any qualifications in teaching at a magical school, but it's more years of education than most British wizards have received. I can't see how seven years at Hogwarts would necessarily qualify someone for the position."

"A Muggle university?" he repeated. "I suppose you have a trans…have transcribed…"

I stood there with my face blank as he struggled to come up with whatever word he was looking for. It worked. Not wanting me to see him fluster, he carried on. "Why do you want this job?"

"Well, the chance to work at Hogwarts is an honor to anyone in magical Britain, alumnus or nae. I'd appreciate access to the library as I try to further my own education and fill in some magical gaps—not quite up to snuff on magical herblore, say. I've been told I'm a fair-minded person, and while I don't think I'm cut out for top-flight refereeing, I think this would be a good opportunity to use that skill at a different level." All true. I  _did_  want access to the library, I  _did_  want to learn more about magic, I'm  _not_  an expert on herblore (although implying I  _cared_ about the thing may have been somewhat of a misdirection on my part). I was told I was fair-minded after declining to protest defeat in a school game in which Harry Potter, my Seeker, saw Dementors and fell off his broom shortly before the opposing Seeker caught the Snitch. And I'm probably not cut out for top-flight refereeing, either.

"I see. And is there anything that would make you better than other candidates?"

Well, besides three years of playing top-flight Quidditch that hadn't happened yet…"I think you'll find, sir, that the fact that I haven't been to Hogwarts could actually make me a better candidate. I talked to some alumni, who told me that Flying lessons are usually held in two groups, combining the houses whose classical elements are opposites. That, and the Quidditch matches I'd be refereeing, makes me think that some of the students could get…short-tempered. No matter how unbiased whoever you hire will be, any alumnus will have left from some house, and even the illusion of bias that isn't really there could be bad. I really hope things get…calmer." I envied those who really could hope for anything, "But for now, maybe a total outsider would be a good influence on the Hogwarts students."

He'd been writing something down, but by the end of my talk had stopped and was just staring at me. "I…see," he said. "You did not go to Hogwarts…but have you yourself played Quidditch before?"

"Oh yes," I said. Maybe a little too eagerly. "With the Aberdeen Amateurs. I was quite into it—without getting much in the way of formal magical education, I picked up a lot from my teammates. Maybe my potion-making skill isn't exactly up to snuff," I smiled, "but I  _can_  fly."

He looked at me again, as if irritated about something. "What…position do you play?"

"C-Chaser," I decided. If I ever needed to play, I couldn't be too impressive or people'd get wise.

"What kind of Healing Spells can you perform?"

"Beyond Episkey, I'm…I'd rather entrust my students to a professional. Madam Pomfrey doesn't referee Quidditch matches, and I wouldn't want to try doing her job—presuming that Sticking Charms don't work on human flesh, I'm good at those."

Snape scribbled something down furiously. "What about defensive magic?"

"Can you really not find anyone to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts?" I laughed.

He did not seem to be in a joking mood.

"I mean, beyond casting  _Lumos_  and that, I have no particular training. I can Apparate away from danger, or fly quickly and long-distance when Anti-Disapparition Jinxes are in effect. I could also Side-Along Apparate." In a few months, my younger self would pick up Kwikspell Ink's  _Practical Legilimency for All_ —I don't always like relying on others, and would get a little paranoid myself. But I had never found anyone to practice on, didn't think I was that good, and hadn't tried it in a while, so figured that I shouldn't bring it up.

"Let me assure you, Mr. Wood, I am not being droll. Uncertain days lie ahead of us all." Oh, they were pretty certain on my end. "If certain…elements of society disapproved of you, you might quickly prove to be in trouble."

"Hogwarts is a safe place," I smiled. "And I essentially grew up in the Muggle world. I don't think any terrorists would want anything with me."

"You "essentially grew up in the Muggle world"? Some…reactionary Ministry elements might find that in itself reason to distrust you."

I shrugged. "I have nothing to hide."

Hah.

Conveniently, a book titled  _Legilimency: Minds and Myths_  chose that moment to catch my eye. Snape's office was covered in portraits—headmasters behind him, and people writhing in pain on either side, so I hadn't been too interested in looking around.

"Very well," he sighed. "What is the definition of blagging?"


	8. New Titles

Oh, good. Onto the part of the interview where I could really do well.

"Grabbing an opponent's broomstick with intent to hinder," I rattled off.

"Haversacking?"

"Remaining in contact with the Quaffle when it passes through the hoop."

"Flacking?"

"Keeper sticking their body through a goalpost from behind."

"Casting?"

Casting? "If this is a foul, it's not one of the more common ones."

He almost seemed to smile. "Were the other examples fouls?"

"Yes."

"And they are punishable by?"

"Penalty shots."

"Which fouls are not punishable by penalty shots?"

By then I was learning to think before I spoke. "I don't know. There's a whole long list of fouls that aren't public knowledge. All the ones I know of are punishable by penalty shots, though."

"Do you have a broom with you?"

"No. Loaned it out."

"Come with me."

I followed him out of the room, half-conscious of fingering my wand under my robes. It turned out I had nothing to worry about—we were just going down to the Quidditch pitch. He nodded at me to get a school broom, so I grabbed a Cleansweep.

"I will release these balls one by one," he said, nodding at a small crate. "Find, and capture them,  _in the order that I release them_ , and then bring them back here."

He tossed them into the air—blue, orange, black, white, red, purple, darker blue. Blue, orange, black, white, p—no, red, purple, dark blue. I stood there a moment, ignoring his glare as I memorized the order, then shot off.

It was a good thing I hadn't claimed to be a Seeker. More than once I silently hissed as the wrong ball entirely flew past. They were larger than normal Snitches, and moved much more slowly, but even still it took a while to return them in the precise order.

"Good," he said. "Again."

White, red, dark blue, light blue, purple, orange, black. I was a little faster that time, and retrieved them again.

"This isn't meant to be a test of my Summoning Charm ability, is it?" I teased.

"No. Again."

Orange, black, red, light blue, purple, dark blue, white. Red, white, light blue, dark blue, purple, orange, black. Or was it black, orange? The black one was hovering right there, at arm's length—no, I thought, too disappointing if I took the easy way out and it was long. I veered away and eventually retrieved the orange one, then had to double back and get the black.

I was very lucky. But I was right.

We kept at it for what I think was an hour exactly, as he whistled me out of the air with two to go on the last one.

"How does your neck feel?" he asked.

"Okay," I said. This was an exaggeration, but I'd played through much worse.

"You fly, and memorize, well," he said. "Pity we have no students here to test you on."

I shrugged. "Thank you, sir."

"That will be all."

I walked back to Hogsmeade—this time, the walk seemed shorter. And then I treated myself to lunch at the Leaky Cauldron before going to work.

Okay, so maybe the frugality thing wasn't going to pan out.

Somehow, I stretched out my salary during the rest of that week. I mean, I didn't stretch it very well, but I didn't know that at the time. Didn't buy any books, but I'd gotten so used to the luxury of sleeping in a proper bed without trying to muster up some unconscious paranoia that I kept splurging at the Leaky.

Any other person would say something about "getting used to sleeping in  _my own_ _bed_ " when describing situations like these. I'm probably one of the only people for whom sleeping in one's own bed was a serious risk. Have I mentioned I really wasn't fond of the whole "time travel" thing?

At last, on Friday, another owl came.

I actually had a line of customers to deal with at that point, so I had the owl flit around while I continued making change for copies of  _Practical Divination for the Discerning Witch: How to Learn and Prepare for What Fate has in Store_. I resisted offering my own commentary.

At last, I ripped it open. "Stay here," I told the owl before looking at the letter. "If I have to write back..."

_Dear Mr. Wood,_

_On behalf of the Governors, I extend an offer of employment effective..._

I told myself to keep from whooping, but my body had not begun to do so. I skimmed through the rest of it—nothing too important.

I scribbled back something appreciative, asking how quickly I could move in. The Hogwarts owls at least stayed put and let me write back. We made arrangements by post, and I decided I could stick it out at the Leaky until the end of the pay period the next week. Just so I could pick up my pay.

My boss didn't seem particularly sorry to see me go. But despite how much time I spent adding up other people's Knuts, I was losing track of my own. Given how much I had already shelled out for robes, and the tab at the Leaky Cauldron I was racking up, I couldn't pay back both that and the St. Mungo's bill before I left. And the Hogwarts salary, at least for someone who was getting room and board, only teaching part-time, didn't require reimbursement for expenses, was pretty...modest.

It would have only taken me a couple months to make up the total. But I didn't want a couple of months. I didn't like being in debt, and I hoped I could get out before a couple of months. Back to my time. Back to my life.

Which left me, and the few remaining Sickles from Flourish and Blotts, with only one option.

Back to a day I really didn't ever want to revisit.


	9. Time's Arrows

The witch had long, stringy hair, charmed pink, and wore a traditional black hat. Her robe seemed to have once been black, but had been patched with so many different Quidditch club patches that it almost hurt my eyes. I couldn't tell whether she was a scalper or just a nut, until she started barking at me.

"Step right up, sonny! Don't have all day now, do we?"

"Er, no," I said, reaching into my pocket. "Speaking of time, actually, what kind of time intervals do you divide it up by?"

"Eh? Speak up, sonny, I'm in my gay nineties!"

"Sorry, ma'am. I mean, do you take bets for "up to an hour, between one and two hours, between two and three, and so on?" Is there a special category for "less than fifteen minutes"? How do you break it up?"

"Laddie, I only do margin of victory. You have to check with the other blokes for all that funny business."

"Laddie!" The Scottish brogue was working. I wore my robe tight so little of my face could be seen. If I was less abysmal at disguising charms, maybe I wouldn't have to—but then again, if I was less abysmal at disguising charms, maybe I wouldn't be in this position.

"Right. Okay. Margin of victory. Two...Let's say more than two-fifty, less than three hundred."

"You need to include the bottom end, laddie, two-fifty to two-ninety inky-lusive."

"Right."

I handed over three more Knuts and moved on.

"'ello, mate," smirked a younger wizard. Maybe only about my age. Or in between both of the mes. "What's yer poison, then?"

"Summat simple. Appleby to catch the Snitch."

"Easy enough, eh? Hand 'em over. That all? You're cheap."

"I like spreading my luck out." I also didn't like the idea of making an overly specific bet, making a whole pile of money just from that alone, and getting people's attention.

"Ah, well. Have it your own little way."

With the next gambler, I bet that Appleby would score exactly four goals before Puddlemere got on the board. With the one after that, I predicted that the game would take more than one hour but less than two. And the one after that, that it would be longer than forty-five minutes. And so on. A couple of Knuts here, a Sickle there, nothing big enough or with predictions too specific enough to draw attention should I happen to win. But lots and lots of them.

I was in the Puddlemere section. It was risky in one sense, that I'd be a little more likely to be recognized as someone other than Fergus. But at the same time, these fans were homers. They gave Appleby longer odds than even an average neutral would. And I was the farthest thing from an average neutral.

Did it seem slightly illicit, betting on a game I'd already played in? Yeah. A little. But I was a time-traveller. We're not ten a Knut. I had to sneak around, use a false name—and I was a  _Pureblood_! I didn't deserve this! I certainly didn't ask for it, and if that was when I was, I would do what I had to to settle my score before I went home.

With an excitable young witch who I thought might be Welsh, I predicted that Appleby would be perfect on multiple penalty attempts. Then, there was nothing to do but sit back and relive the barrage.

I'd lost top-flight games before. Two of them, against two wins—at least as far as "before" was concerned for everyone else in the stadium. Including, surreally enough,  _me—_ that is to say, the Oliver of 1997, there circling the goalposts before the game began.

It was just about as ugly as I remembered. In every sense—poorly played (especially on my end), fouls on both sides (leading to the aforementioned penalty shots), not to mention the fact that the Arrows' Chasers weren't particularly attractive specimens of humanity. Certainly, Oliver the player did not seem particularly pleased to see them.

He kept his cool as we fell behind forty-nil; then seemed to loosen up when Perks scored to get us on the board. But there would be very little more to get excited about. By the time he made his first decent save—I hadn't remembered that one at all, it looked to me and the rest of the fans like it was probably going to be a goal—Puddlemere were down by eighty. We'd narrow the gap to fifty at one point, but it never got any closer.

From there on in, it was just a slow, protracted ordeal. Grant fell off her broom, which I remembered but which no one had been willing to give me odds on. Afterwards, she was even less effective than she'd previously been (which was an achievement). I was able to swerve away from the Bludgers myself, but Jenkins was not so lucky, and had to whizz out of the way close to the Snitch. At least that's what it looked like, as what was left of the fight seemed to go out of her and the Chasers in kind. I was proud, vicariously, to say I held my own, and kept trying to punch the Quaffle away all the way to the end. I missed and almost punched an Arrow Beater, granted, but I was trying.

Not that I had anyone to say that I was holding my own to, of course. It's just the principle of the thing.

Finally, the Arrow Seeker came up with the Snitch, and it was all over. For some reason, I worried that the bookies would take off and never give me my money, but I had nothing to worry about. Most of them were too gloomy about Puddlemere's defeat to be too concerned about the added woe of seeing their Galleons slip away. A few of them seemed to be a little drunk, which surprised me, since I didn't know how they had the time to get that way.

The money was, all told, enough to pay my bill off and get my broom back, which I did the next day. I won't lie, it felt pretty reassuring to have that off from my plate. I was beholden to nobody, and I could go back with a clear head.

Except my head wasn't clear. For some reason, watching the game and collecting my money really got me down. I told myself it was how bad the game was. It had to be. The younger version of myself, I remembered, was brooding too.

One funny thing that happened, though, was that I lost one of the bets. If I'd been trying on purpose to avoid being caught out, then I would have placed one or two small bets that I didn't plan on winning. I hadn't thought to do that. And I  _still_  lost. It was that one about the game being more than one hour long—it clocked in at fifty-seven minutes, which in part raised the question of when did those people have time to drink. I'd just misremembered the time—sometimes it drags on when you're doing something unpleasant, which I certainly was.

Oh well. It amused me, anyway.


	10. A First Time For Everything

If I had a Knut for every tiny face on the opposite side of the Great Hall, I'd have a Sickle.

There were twenty-nine of them, and the House tables looked scant in spite of the fact that attendance was mandatory. Half of the seated students, more or less, would have gone to school with me at some point or another.

I was not ready for the job. Not at all.

The first years were led in by a man and woman who looked vaguely similar to each other, though not familiar to me. While the man stayed behind, the woman set out the Sorting Hat, and it began to sing.

_"Welcome, incoming students!  
Please don't find me too strange.  
_ _I've been informed that Hogwarts  
_ _Has undergone a change.  
_ _You're all from wizard families,  
_ _Or so I have heard tell.  
_ _I suppose this makes my job  
_ _Easy; that's just as well.  
_ _You know of Godric Gryffindor,  
_ _Courageous and most daring.  
_ _You know of Helga Hufflepuff,  
_ _Loyal and just and caring.  
_ _You know, as well, of Ravenclaw,  
_ _Witty and very clever,  
_ _And Slytherin's ambition  
_ _To succeed in each endeavor.  
_ _I need not summarize this,  
_ _But I still have to say  
_ _A fact about these Founders  
_ _That's important still today.  
_ _Despite their many differences  
_ _The four were best of friends,  
_ _Each contributing special means  
_ _To work toward the same ends.  
_ _So while you might see your Houses  
_ _In terms of loss and winning,  
_ _Remember well, your magic lives  
_ _Are only just beginning."_

The students muttered to themselves. "What the hat means," snapped the woman, "is that you will each come forward when we read your names, one at a time, and try it on. It will tell you which house you belong in, and you will take your seat at the corresponding table."

"Let us begin," said the man. "Aubrey, Ernest."

Ernest was a tall boy, who the Sorting Hat took a few moments to place into Ravenclaw. Next up was Baddock, Catherine; Slytherin. And so on and so forth—the only surname I really recognized from my school days was Derrick, Rachel. Her brother had been a Slytherin Beater; Rachel, however, went to Hufflepuff.

"Yarrow, Desdemona" joined Slytherin to finish the list off—the shortest Sorting I'd ever sat through. Slytherin had eight new students; the other houses, seven each. Poor Evan Jones would be the only boy in the Hufflepuff first-year dormitory.

We ate. Most of the professors looked familiar, other than the two who had led the Sorting. The food at the staff table wasn't much better than what I remembered as a student, but that was fine. I passed on the wine, but enjoyed some brilliant doughnuts for dessert.

And then, after the dessert disappeared, Professor Snape stood up.

"Good evening," he said.

No one responded.

"I have always found it...amusing that a new Headmaster—or Headmistress's—first Welcome Speech can never be entirely their own notions. They are always, of course, promoted from the faculty, and must have the responsibility of welcoming their replacement. Thus, I shall not dawdle in introducing you to Amycus Carrow, who will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts." Funny, Snape almost seemed to sneer as he said that. Everyone in school knew he'd been after that job for ages—maybe he was just bitter he'd "had" to become Headmaster after just one year.

"My duty is particularly onerous," Snape continued, "as more than one of our instructors have, ah, tendered their resignations for personal reasons. In their stead, I introduce you to Alycto Carrow, who will be teaching Muggle Studies." Husband and wife? "Madam Carrow has been most convincing in her zeal for the subject, and as a result, this class will now be mandatory for all students. The Deputy Headmistress and Headmaster—incidentally, the Carrows themselves—will be adjusting your class schedules accordingly tomorrow morning.

I also ought to introduce Fergus Wood, who will be teaching flying lessons and refereeing Quidditch matches. Those wishing to play, or commentate for, Quidditch matches should consult their Heads of Houses." Snape had pulled me aside before the feast and told me that I was not to use the name Bailey. Fine by me. Halved my chances of making a huge blunder on that front.

"And, now that I am free to discuss whatever topics I desire, I wish to pay tribute to someone whose presence at this table is perhaps underappreciated. I speak of Professor Horace Slughorn, who was  _my_ Potions professor...some time ago—by no circumstances," he glared at the Ravenclaws, "attempt to infer my age. Professor Slughorn did not plan to stay out of retirement very long when he returned to the school last year; however, he has graciously returned to teach Potions, as he is now needed as the Slytherin Head of House." Really? I had thought the Carrows looked like Slytherin alumni, but maybe I was wrong. "I hope his attention to duty provides an...instructive model for you students."

With a slow nod, he said, "Your Prefects will lead you to your dormitories. Mind the stairs."

The Prefects had been first years when I was a seventh year—I didn't know them. I'd been told that neither of the Head students, Theodore Nott and Mandy Brocklehurst, had themselves been prefects, which was pretty unusual. Then again, a Deputy Headmaster  _and_  Headmistress? There were a lot of strange things going on. Even aside from the fact that I was there. From three years in the future. Sometimes I could go entire  _hours_  at a time without remembering that.

I also needed to be led to my dormitory, as well as minding the stairs. In the end, it was Professor McGonagall who showed me the way—in a tower by the library, overlooking the training grounds. Perfect.

"You didn't go to Hogwarts?" she said. "Of course not, I'd remember you."

"No," I said shyly, not wanting to look her in the face. McGonagall had been my Head of House, and was always one of my favorite teachers. I didn't want her to catch on.

"All right, then. Well...pay attention to the Headmaster. Mind the stairs."

"I'll try," I promised.


	11. First Years

I had about two weeks before I started giving lessons. I spent some of that time putting together a lesson plan, working from Madam Hooch's scant notes. I have to admit, the curriculum was pretty sloppy. How to "properly" mount one's broom? As long as nobody was getting hurt or likely to hurt anyone else in the air I didn't see how there could be one proper way.

On the other hand, I did get to see an uncensored list of fouls. This was phenomenal to have access to. Did you know that you could get penalized for transfiguring an opposing Beater's Bat into a "spiked object"? Or enlarging the inner rim of the goalpost so Quaffles couldn't sneak through? I'd keep it with me when I was refereeing, just in case something came up, but it was very fun to pore over.

When I wasn't working on my job, I was holed up in the library, trying to find out anything about time travel. As I suspected, there were lots of older books, more so than at Flourish and Blotts, and about real interesting magic. Soon enough, I was able to find some actual stuff.

 _Time travel_ , read one book,  _can be accomplished through the use of Time-Turners. A Time-Turner is an hourglass suspended on a necklace (image, page 256) that can be placed around the neck or necks of those travelling through time. Rotating the hourglass will send the individuals back in time, one hour for every rotation._

So that explained the references to hourglasses! But I certainly hadn't used one to  _get_  to 1997, and it didn't look like any of them could send me back to the future.

_Trade in Time-Turners is prohibited by international statute, and the means of constructing them are unknown._

Well, that was anticlimactic.

I kept reading, other books, and discovered that the only supply of Time-Turners in Britain were located in the Department of Mysteries. Again, not somewhere I was going any time soon. In other times I'd have felt more comfortable wandering up there as soon as I could and introduced myself as an accidental time-traveller, hoping for someone to know the trick to send me home or experiment with magic until they discovered it. But the Ministry had more...important things to do, and I sure didn't want to be the one who got in their way.

I was at Hogwarts, of course, and surely the professors there did research. Again, it was hard to know who to go to—Flitwick, maybe? McGonagall was the only one I really trusted.

The Carrows were a sight. It turned out they were brother and sister, not husband and wife, but that wasn't important. What was important was that they asked us all to report any "troublemakers" to them, for discipline. (Wasn't Filch supposed to be in charge of that? I saw him walking around from time to time.)

To be precise, Amycus asked us to report "troublemakers." Alecto  _defined_  trouble; "violence, disrespect, sedition, treason." Playing Gobstones in the hallways after Curfew didn't make the list.

And then, Thursday rolled around.

I'd brought up the possibility of just having one large lesson to Snape. 29 students was very small—some of the  _split_  classes had had over twenty students themselves. He let me do it, though didn't seem very confident in my ability to handle that many eleven-year-olds.

That made two of us.

"All right," I gulped, staring at the crowd of students. "My name's Fergus Wood—you can call me Mr. Wood. I'm not a knight, so if you say Sir it'll take me a minute to know who you're talking to. I'm also not a professor of a proper class. However!" I snapped at several of the Hufflepuff girls. "This does not make this an  _im_ proper class. Are we clear?"

"Yes, Mr. Wood," ventured a Gryffindor.

"Good lassie. What's your name?"

"Er, Eileen."

"Very good, Eileen. You're a first year?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'll let you in on a little secret, Eileen. I'm a first year too."

This got a couple looks, mostly students looking at each other.

"This is my first year at Hogwarts. So I'm going to need you lot to help me teach this class. Now who here has ridden a broom before?"

More hands than I expected, but then again there weren't any Muggle-borns here. I pointed to a Slytherin boy. "What's your name?"

"Michael, Michael Pritchard."

"All right, Michael, show us how you get on a broom. Mount it and hover, but do not attempt to fly."

He did so, while the others looked on.

"Did you notice what he did with his wand? What spell he cast?"

"But I—" Michael began.

"I'm not asking you. I'm asking the class. Did you see what he did with his wand? Anyone? C'mon, now."

No answer.

"All right, Michael, tell them."

"I didn't do anything! You don't use magic to get on a broomstick!"

"That's exactly right, Michael. Broomsticks are magical devices that respond to magical individuals. You dinnae need a wand or any special spell—what you  _do_ need is a strong will to get up and want to stay on your broom. Lots of really important magic all comes down to willpower. Now, I've heard it's easier to hold your hand over your broom and say "Up!" So why don't we all give that a try? Wand hand over your broom—you always feel more confident with your wand hand, don't you? On three. One, two, three...Up!"

The bulk of the brooms went up into their owners' hands, though that was perhaps to be expected given how many of them knew how to fly. A couple Ravenclaws mounted their brooms and took off towards the opposite end of the pitch, while another Hufflepuff girl complained that she hadn't gotten  _on_ her broom even though it had gotten off the ground.

I blew my whistle for what would be the first of many times. "Oy! We're not flying yet."

"Thought you said these were flying lessons," said another Slytherin.

"They will be. Once we've all gotten our brooms off the ground."

"Can't we pick them up?" said a Gryffindor who looked like she wanted to do no such thing.

"Of course you can, but the more practice you get with using broom magic, the more confident you'll be." I looked around. Maybe 29 really was too many. "All right. I want to try something. Everyone who thinks they can fly to the end of this field and back, go ahead and try now. Low to the ground, if you please!"

That last warning proved prescient. Not as, I'm from the future prescient. Not even Divination prescient. Just ordinary prescient. Two students took very short falls; several others, however, including Michael and Rachel Derrick, were successful.

"Take a good look at these fliers—they're going to be helping you out if you have questions," I said. "You lot, it's silly to have you here to learn to fly. I'm going to help you learn a little bit about teaching, and hopefully I'll learn something from you. I'll warn you, this is harder than it looks.

Now, the rest of you, what I want you to do is  _mount_  your brooms. First watch me." These school brooms felt small. Built for Seekers, I guessed, or first years. "Watch how I balance so that the bristles don't slide between my legs."

As I had indicated, this is much easier to do than to put into words. Much, much, easier.

One of the Ravenclaw fliers, Arminius Harcourt, got the hang of adjusting people quickly and helped reseat two of his classmates. Michael at first wanted to just fly around the pitch, but a couple screeching whistles put an end to that idea, and he eventually tried to help his friends if for no reason than boredom. Eventually, everyone seemed to be in a semi-stable position.

"Okay," I said. Maybe I shouldn't have had them in lines facing each other. "On three, you're going to kick off from the ground, hard. Try and go up a few feet, then lean forward a little to come back down. On three...one, two, three!"

There were no collisions. There were a few unsuccessful flights, and a few short crashes. But there were also a handful of students who had not flown before, who managed to do exactly as I said. I smiled without really meaning to. Yeah, I could definitely get used to this.

I had them spread out, and have anybody who looked successful at least try to help the others along in the hopes of unearthing a new Armnius. No such dramatic luck, but I was able to convince a few more students to keep trying through incrementally more successful attempts, so by the end of the hour I'd definitely made progress.

So, just getting the rest of them up to snuff, and then reffing the Quidditch matches? The job, I decided, was going to be easy!


	12. Of Comets and Cauldron Cakes

"Er. Hello."

"Hello," smiled a student. Probably Ravenclaw. Probably a third year.

"Where'...re ye off tae, then?"

"Dorm," he muttered.

"Where'..re ye coming from, then?"

"Bathroom."

It would help if the bathrooms stayed in one place.

"What's your name?"

"Um...Louis. Louis Bridges."

"Well, Master Bridges, you ought to get back to your dorm, then."

"Right." He scampered off.

Maybe I hadn't done exceptionally well.

As a "teacher" who had very little to officially do most of the week, I was getting extra assignments from the Deputies to patrol the halls and report back to them if there was any trouble. So far, I had not seen any legitimate trouble.

Just between you and me—not that I wanted to get out of work, or anything—they'd probably have been better served by choosing someone who'd been around  _long enough to know all the students' names_. That name could have been as fake as mine and I'd have been none the wiser.

So, I spent the time when I wasn't in the library or halfheartedly patrolling trying to come up with educational (the students', not mine) things I could do to get out of patrolling. It got a bit tiresome telling off oblivious snoggees for "disruptive noise," and Ginny Weasley almost hexed me once because I "sneaked up from behind" her and it was "startling." Plus, when I was alone with the Carrows (which did not happen often, and was not my own idea), they tended to quiz me just to make sure I hadn't let anyone slip by. (When I thought about what that literally meant I had to bite my tongue.)

I missed Quidditch. I missed playing it all the time. I went flying early in the morning, but often had to borrow a school broom. My Comet 310 hadn't flown straight since I got it back—maybe it had been damaged in the crash. Despite a few rudimentary repairing charms, I couldn't really fix it, and despite my attempts to compensate, I wanted to stay in good, normal form for when I got back to my own time. I also listened to matches on the wireless (sometimes Puddlemere, but often as not something else—once was really enough for some of those games), but of course that wasn't the same.

My second flying lesson went pretty well. Past a certain level of "can fly the length of the training grounds without wiping out," which like I said several of them were at coming in, it was hard to tell what the point of the class was. Were they training to be Quidditch players? The next Jocunda Sykes? Trying to outrun spells and/or owls in the air? Nobody on staff really cared. I was never "Professor Wood," from them, which I didn't mind incredibly much as I wasn't actually Professor Wood to begin with.

Although, maybe I was. It wasn't like the others had some particular certification. I didn't have a N.E.W.T. in the subject, obviously, but neither had Hooch, and I was as qualified as they could get considering. Maybe that was all it took.

Might as well make plans for the medium term, as I still didn't see how I was going to get back when I belonged. Maybe I could resign from Hogwarts after term ended in 2000, hang out for a couple months, then wait in the stands and Apparate under the goalposts at the moment I disappeared? Then I could get back to my Quidditch career. If I hadn't gone rusty after not playing for three full years. If people didn't start to ask questions about where Fergus Wood had gotten off to. It was speculative, okay?

I proposed at a staff meeting that I could give extracurricular flying and Quidditch lessons for older students. "Not everyone wants to, or is going to, play Quidditch for their house team," I tried to explain. "It might help students to have another opportunity to fly and get feedback on their form. Try out some broom games without worrying about having to assemble teams on their own."

"In my teaching career," said Snape, "I have never come across students...lacking in motivation to round up their fellows for broom games."

Hmm. This didn't quite jibe with my experience. Maybe everyone was just too sick of me.

"There's no official policy for organizing new extracurricular groups," said McGonagall. "If you're willing to supervise, talk to Heads of Houses so they can put schedules and notices up in their house common rooms."

So maybe I'd made too big a show of it? "All right, thanks."

For the first time I was glad Snape had become Headmaster; after that showing, I was in no mood to ask him to post a notice. McGonagall, Sprout, and Slughorn gladly complied.

I took time to corner Professor Flitwick alone, and ask him a couple of follow-up questions. No, there was no Louis Bridges, in Ravenclaw or any other house. Figured.

"And I was just wondering what you knew about time charms."

"Time charms? Like for your alarm? Of course, I can help you out with those! Such a rude feeling to be awakened in the morning..."

"Er, I think I've got those down," I smiled. "I mean, you know, time travel."

"Time travel?" His face turned white. "That's not...feasible at all."

"What do you mean? I've heard there are Time-Turners..."

"Those aren't Charmed so much as  _built_  to travel through time, and they've all been destroyed anyway." Great. "My goodness, what an esoteric subject."

"Yeah. I know. I was just...reading about it. Thought you might know something."

"I know just the trick for you!" he said. "There's a new line of Omnioculars coming out that people can place memories into, like a Pensieve. Then you can go back and watch all the Quidditch matches of the last year again."

"That'd be brilliant," I said truthfully. "Thanks, Professor."

They  _were_  pretty brilliant. I had one of them. Had had.

I stayed in Hogwarts or the grounds all the time, except for one night towards the end of September when I went up to Honeydukes and bought a Cauldron Cake with some leftover winnings from the Appleby game. I'd been doing the math, counting the days since I'd arrived.

There were no owls. There were no presents. There was no song. But it marked the day—not my birthday, but maybe Fergus's—that I had been alive for exactly twenty-four years.


	13. Flight Club

"You shouldn't be here."

Another late night, another Ravenclaw. Fifth or sixth year? Maybe fourth. She was wearing what looked like radishes in her hair. I think I'd have remembered going to school with her.

"I suppose," she said drearily, turning away but back to look at me. "Neither should you."

"Excuse me?" I said, a little offended. "I'm a Professor. I'm on patrol here."

"You're a Misfilum, aren't you? I'm so sorry."

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes," she said, turning back towards Ravenclaw Tower. "Sorry to bother you."

"Go to bed," I hollered.

The nights got to be a bit frustrating.

Daytime was better. The first meeting of the flight club drew maybe thirty kids, I wasn't sure, from different years and houses.

"Any first years here...no first years...Good. Well, I guess you all know why you're here, hopefully to work on your flying ability and maybe learn some ball tricks as well. I want you to divvy up into groups of...four. And make sure," I called out, "that no group is all the same house!"

"How come?" called an older Gryffindor.

_Because you're going to have to get used to picking your own groups, and not just by house._ The newest members of the Puddlemere reserve team had filled me in—Hogwarts no longer  _had_  houses, _per se_ , by 2000. There was still Quidditch—had to have some way to have the students compete, and see who was the best—but, like at Durmstrang, it was more of an "intramural" thing.

"Because," I said, "this is going to be a race. And if you expect me to give house points to the winning team, well, nobody's going to get any Chocolate Frogs." That trip to Honeydukes had been quite fruitful. For some reason, I hadn't gotten around to giving or taking any house points during my first month on staff. Maybe the "outsider" story was really working.

Anyway, that got their attention, and they split up. I passed out soft balls that looked vaguely Quaffle-esque. "Here's how it works. You all fly in any direction while I count  _One chimaera, two chimaera_ , and then you all have to freeze and pass the ball to someone on your team. Try and think about how far your teammates can get in two seconds and still be within range of the ball—I'm a Chaser so I know these things, but good luck. First team to pass the ball through the opposing goalpost wins the Frogs. Ready—one chimaera, two chimaera!"

Very mixed results. Some teams overshot their peers, others forgot who was on their team, others couldn't make the pass all the way. "If you drop it, go back to the beginning but let a different teammate start. Ready? One chimaera, two chimaera, freeze! And pass."

The first team to finish was completely mixed, one from each house, although it looked like it was just a brother and sister passing back and forth while the others flew around.

"New rule for the second round, everyone has to make a pass at least once before anyone does it twice."

"Then there's no "at least,"" a fourth year pointed out.

"Good point. You can fly up to "three chimaera" away this time. Okay, let's go..."

It didn't take them long to find out just how close or far they could get from their teammates and still be successful. After two more rounds (I was running through Chocolate Frogs pretty quickly), I told them to switch it up and get different teammates.

A few students were bored by the end, thinking that it was too easy, but I told them I'd have a different game for the next time.

"Can we play Creaothceann?" volunteered one boy with a  _legitimately_ Scottish accent.

"I'll think about it," I laughed.

As I was reading in the library again, it finally crossed my mind to try the Restricted Section. Granted, I wasn't after  _dark_  magic per se, but I wasn't a student and didn't need permission anymore.

Yes, that was better. Once I'd gotten the hang of the call letter and number system (it wouldn't have taken so long if more of them weren't in Runic symbols), I was able to find a couple books that went into more detail.

_As of yet, no specific properties of sand, chain, or glass are deemed necessary for the construction of Time-Turners, although general consensus holds that having glass made from sand as distant as possible from the sand in question helps to avoid Resonance accidents..._

_Time travel is either strictly controlled or prohibited by all wizarding governing bodies. Even in spite of these laws, and to a much wider extent before they were established, time travel could be dangerous. The obvious metaphysical issues notwithstanding, contact between multiple copies of the same individual could prove lethal. Many confused wizards and witches have killed either their past or future selves by mistake..._

_Time travel to the past is accomplished, of course, by Time-Turners. Time travel to the future involves less private magic and the theory supporting it is known even to Muggles. Notably, the Department of Mysteries' public records report Brady Curtis took fifteen minutes to travel two hours on his supercharmed Silver Arrow in 1918, although since he spent the next hundred and five minutes vomiting this method is not recommended as a time-saving technique._

_In either case, of course, no change is made to the sequence of events as they play out. When travelling to the future, one emerges without ability to have influenced the intervening time. When visiting the past by Time-Turner, the traveler carries out events that_ had already happened  _by the time they came from (whether they were aware of them or not)._

_Rumors involving the possibility that other objects could allow for travel into the past remain unsubstantiated..._

"...until now," I sighed, jotting down the title and author. If the theory of getting to the future was known to  _Muggles_ , I had a pretty decent shot.

So, I'd have to stay out of my other self's way...but there was no danger in that, I'd already gotten through without running across myself. Still, the line about wizards and witches killing "either their past or future selves by mistake" stuck in my mind for some reason—every time I tried to think about it, I felt like there was something funny about the concept I couldn't quite put my finger on. So I just tried not to think about it.


	14. Of Ghosts and Grandfathers

_To whom it may concern,_

_I am an amateur broom racer in training for Kopparberg-Arjeplog. To practice, I have tried to cast time charms on my Comet 310, in the hopes that I will be able to magically pace myself. Unfortunately this has backfired and my broomstick now disappears and reappears at will. At first I thought I was just unlucky but then I read about Brady Curtis' time travel into the future. Could you inform me of how Curtis used his broom to travel through time, so I can see if I am inadvertently casting those charms on my broom?_

_Sincerely,_

_Fergus Wood_

I addressed the owl to the Department of Mysteries, the Ministry of Magic, and sent it off. Figured I had nothing to lose, really.

Before the next season of Quidditch could get underway, I had to sort out the matter of finding commentators. Apparently it was a job nobody wanted since Lee Jordan left—to hear Snape tell it, the job had been split between a Ravenclaw ignoramus who didn't know the rules of the game, and a Hufflepuff jerk whose commentary had incited the temporary destruction of the booth itself. The other teachers seemed to corroborate this.

I wound up having a Ravenclaw first-year, Mallory Hitchens, on tap for the Slytherin-Gryffindor match-I vaguely remembered her from my class. Short, not a great flier, but she was the only volunteer who wasn't already booked by playing in the game! (A Slytherin Chaser, Herbert Burke was in line to commentate Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff later in November.) I couldn't tell which of the Carrows would reprise McGonagall's role of leaning over the microphone and cutting off announcers who got too biased.

Disappointingly to some, I did not let the flight club students play Creaothceann. Instead, I had them do relay races around the school itself. This should not have been very exciting, but when you're used to going back and forth over a pitch, it's apparently a nice introduction to distance flying. By the third meeting, attendance was way up—there were a lot more students who hadn't been there before. Some of them, granted, spent most of their time talking to each other—Ginny Weasley, who was getting quite enough practice as Gryffindor Quidditch captain—spent most of her time talking to young students. But that was probably fine in itself given how much I was doing to mix up the houses at every opportunity. I finally suggested  _year-against-year_  Shuntbumps—knock your classmates off their broom, but don't knock off anyone else or you're out of the game. Seemed to work, where by "work" is meant "only one of them wound up in hospital." He was great about it, though, told me later it was the most fun he'd had on a broomstick since Quidditch tryouts when his cousin hit him with a Bludger. Also the only fun. But hey.

His injury, though, was nothing next to the one that happened after the Halloween feast.

The feast itself had been a good one. The enormous jack-o-lanterns lit up the Great Hall, and I gorged myself full of chocolate. Trelawney, the Divination professor, came down from her tower to help the students peel apples and divine their future spouse's initials. A lot of the older students were having trouble with this—one Hufflepuff girl couldn't make out whether hers was meant to be an N or a Z. (The reaction of someone sitting alongside her, whose initials I narrowed down to two, maybe helped her rule one of those possibilities out.) Many of the others didn't even get that far. They'd peel the apple and toss it over their shoulder, but before it hit the ground, Peeves the Poltergeist snatched it up and pelted it at Moaning Myrtle, the little ghost.

And then I went to bed. It was a Friday night and students were getting up to hijinks, surely, but that was none of my business.

Saturday, and November, came. I heard no news. For All Saints Sunday, most of the staff were around for Flitwick to talk about the  _unity_ of those who have gone beyond the veil or something, I forget the details, but he must have stressed one or two words because the Carrows didn't seem to take it well. The faculty (and a few students who rotated through to preach as well) had not been as openly political as Macmillan had, which I appreciated.

 _Still_  didn't know what was going on. Maybe they assumed I knew? At any rate, I was out of the loop until the staff meeting, when Amycus unceremoniously informed me that I would now be watching for troublemakers to report to them every day, from eight till ten at night.

" _Every_  day?" I repeated. "Isn't that Filch's job?"

They glanced at each other. "I take it you have not heard the unfortunate news about the Squib?" Alecto asked.

"No." Filch was a Squib? That actually explained a lot. "What happened?"

"Some of our students have been a bit too...eager in applying their lessons from Muggle Studies," said Alecto. "While it is certainly true that Squibs must  _learn_  their place, his place was mopping grime here. In their, ah, overzealous efforts to teach him a lesson, they caused him some injury and he claims to be unable to work for some time."

"And he is quite right," sniffed Madam Pomfrey. "A dreadful injury."

"So, rather than disturb someone with, ah, academic responsibilities, you will be assisting the Prefects on their duties," Alecto finished.

"Fine," I sighed. Flight club hadn't been that successful for me.

The next morning, the Department of Mysteries finally wrote back.

_Mr. Wood,_

_Divulge the incantations for time travel? Are you mental?_

_If we told you, we'd have to kill your grandfather._

_Best of luck with the broom race._


	15. Of Sloth Gwips and Sore Necks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the scores for Hogwarts Quidditch games were made up by a program someone wrote on another site; I inputted how strong, relatively, I wanted the teams to be, and the results popped back out...some upsets! So any standings drama down the line is all the program's fault, not me trying to artificially insert tension. :p

_myst_ , read the writing on the wall.

I was just finishing my patrolling, and there it was, faded but legible. M, Y, S, and T. Short for mystery? Sure looked like one. There was a little smudge under the y.

I assumed that whoever was behind this was the Carrows' kind of troublemaker. Fortunately for whoever it was, I had no idea who was behind it. So I just magicked it off the wall and went on with my week.

The patrolling wasn't so bad. The prefects handled most of it—I just had to deal with a couple kids who couldn't find their way back to the common room, at least that first week. I checked back where the graffiti had been, a couple of times, but there was no further mischief there.

The second Saturday in November was opening day for the Hogwarts Quidditch season. Gryffindor versus Slytherin, a match sure to bring out plenty of partisanship even from the other houses. The stands were pleasantly full (every time I was in the Great Hall it felt kind of empty for some reason), but somewhat quiet, as if people were leery of being too vocal for either side. Bar the roar of a fantastical lion hat.

It was McGonagall herself who flanked Mallory Hitchens in the commentary booth—the Carrows seemed to have other things to do. I, for my part, felt almost as nervous as the players must have been as I watched them line up, the box at my feet.

"Captains, shake hands," I said.

Ginny Weasley and Ferdinand Urquhart complied.

"Mount your brooms."

Fifteen of us did so, robes rustling in the wind.

"Three, two, one..."

I blew my whistle, and we were off. Fast. The players moved fast.

"It's Okuhawt, Okuhawt in possession fo Slyiduwin. Passes to Boke, Boke ovo to Vaisey. Intocepted by Weasley of Gwyffindo. Ovah to Wobins now."

I'd been to the Quidditch World Cup. I'd met wizards from around the world. I'd heard a few of them make fun of British accents. But never had I seen anyone try so hard and pronounce so few Rs as little Mallory Hitchens. She really was quite short. And I don't think she had any idea how ridiculous she sounded.

"Bludgah fwom Cwabbe of Slythewin. Weasley dwops it. Back to Boke. He scose! Slythewin lead ten to zewo!"

Wow. Quidditch was a fast-moving game.

Short of judicious use of  _Geminio_  to create eyes in the back of my head, how on (well, slightly above) earth was I supposed to keep up with everything? And Gryffindor/Slytherin no less! If there were any fouls...

The crowd applauded for Burke's goal, rather demurely all told. Like they were out at a theater, rather than cheering on their classmates. Soon enough, they would have reason to clap for Urquhart and Vaisey. And then Burke once more. And yet again.

It was a clean game for the most part as far as I could tell, but my neck hurt like the dickens. There were some penalties, of course, that I duly called. I had to ding Jimmy Peakes for Cobbing, which gave a penalty to Slytherin; Urquhart easily scored past Bobby Glen to extend Slytherin's lead to seventy. Gryffindor were at least on the board by then, thanks to Weasley.

For a mumbling eleven-year-old, Hitchens knew her Quidditch jargon, correctly (well, almost) pointing out when Goyle pulled off a "Sloth Gwip Woll" and when Weasley was attempting to engage in a "Poskoff Ploy." (She missed Simon Chambers entirely; Vaisey wound up with the Quaffle, and scored Slytherin's tenth goal.)

I had to penalize Gryffindor again (Glen was Flacking), and Slytherin once again scored, but Slytherin shortly after drew a penalty for Stooging. Weasley scored to double her, and Gryffindor's, total, and I took off again wondering what I was going to do when an "intent" play was possible. How could I know if someone was flying with intent to collide? I wished I'd practiced my Legilimency more.

"Anotha missed save fwom Glen of Gwyffindo," Hitchens nonchalantly informed us. In her favor, McGonagall had not yet needed to take over the microphone, presumably assuming that there were only fourteen players out there and anyone who cared could narrow it down well enough.

The game continued, rather one-sidedly as far as goalscoring went. Slytherin had two returning Chasers, as did Gryffindor; both Keepers were new. I was a little surprised that Gryffindor didn't have their act together more, but I'd heard something about Weasley playing out of position during the previous season? And it was her first time as captain, so maybe she was just having tactical trouble. Certainly, Slytherin's pair of beaters—two large seventh-years who didn't look very bright—were at least more positionally aware of each other than the Gryffindors.

But that's the thing about Quidditch—one lucky break and the goals don't really matter. With Gryffindor down a hundred points, a small red blur shot towards the Slytherin goalposts. A Bludger gaining speed on her, she pivoted upward to avoid it and looked like she was about to crash into the rim of the post from underneath. Instead, she shot under the post, reached one hand triumphantly ahead of her, Malfoy of Slytherin hurtling helplessly behind, and retrieved the Snitch.

I blew my whistle. There wasn't any controversy about the play, or anything, but...hey. It was my whistle. Times like those, you go ahead and blow the thing.

"And Natalie McDonald catches the Snitch!" Wow, a whole sentence without any Rs. "Gwyffindo wins!" She had the right intonation for an announcer, at least—excited about a victory, in general, but not alienating half the crowd too much. Everyone seemed pretty quiet for Snakes-Lions. Maybe it was the first match of the season, or maybe it was because the hundred-point lead had evaporated so quickly.

It was fine by me. I'd just refereed a Quidditch match, and while my neck was still very sore, felt like I'd done fine. I didn't need any more excitement in my life.


	16. A Mystery Solved

There were footsteps in the hallways. Not just mine.

Mine, however walking along a third-floor corridor,, were definitely part of them. Which was a bit unfortunate, given that my feet were so much bigger than the students'. For all the noise they were making—yes,  _they_ , it was too loud to be just one of them—I was also making noise.

And that gave some of them time to hide, because when I turned the corner, there was only one girl. I remembered her—the Ravenclaw who'd been spouting nonsense back in October.

" _Homenum revelio_ ," I cast, looking for the other miscreants. But the spell didn't really work—maybe because I was distracted by the graffiti painted on a wall.

_Dumbledore's Army, still recruiting._

Army...still. That wasn't a  _blur_  I had seen between the m and the y the other night—it was a  _comma_.

"Would anyone like to explain the meaning of this?" I tapped the wall.

"How thick is he?" came a girl's voice out of the darkness. Ginny Weasley?

"Quiet!" the Ravenclaw whispered. "I'm sorry, Professor, the Blibbering Humdingers are very loud tonight."

"It's all right, Luna," said Weasley. "He knows I'm here. Take my charm off."

She reached backwards.

" _My_  charm, Ginny, don't...provoke the Humdinger, okay?"

The Ravenclaw—Luna—lifted a Disillusionment Charm.

"Wait a minute," Weasley slowly said. "You're new here. He doesn't know what the D.A. is." She giggled.

"Dumbledore's Army," I repeated. "Something you have to go around leaving messages for to recruit people to— _or_ ," I realized, "mention when you're mingling with other students at flight club. Yes, very good."

"Yeah, thanks for that," Weasley said brightly. "Really brilliant opportunity you've given us there."

"But not," I slowly reasoned, "something you could put up signs about. Or even—unless I interrupted you in the act—leave a time and place you want your "recruitees" to show  _up_. Very interesting strategy you've got going, here."

"Yes, you're right," said Weasley breezily, "we're rubbish at this and we clearly won't amount to anything. Nothing to waste your time about, we'll be going back to our rooms, now. Come on."

Dumbledore's Army. But Dumbledore was dead. And Weasley's family was part of the resistance...

"You're right. You  _won't_  amount to anything," I said, trying to stress the word "won't" just enough that they'd trust my authority but not so much that they'd get wise. "And if whatever you're up to is something the Carrows wouldn't like me telling them about, you're better off stopping it right now."

"We don't stand a chance, so we just shouldn't bother, eh?" said Weasley. "Is it true you're related to Oliver Wood? You don't take after him at all."

She had a point. I wasn't one to give up. But I'd never known the outcome of a game I was about to play before it happened—and there was a lot more than a championship on the line.

"Don't be so hard on him, Ginny," said Luna. "He's just a Misfilum. He doesn't know any better."

"Misfilum, eh?" I repeated, not really paying attention to the fact that Luna was being a little warmer to me. It was the second time she'd called me that, and I don't like being called words I don't know.. "Is this the new insult to call professors behind their back?"

Ginny seemed torn. Her expression suggested that, in fact, it was not, and Luna was merely a bit on the mad side. On the other hand, she didn't seem to want to stand against her friend.

"Come with me," I said. "There's something I want to see before I decide what to do with you, and I'm not letting you out of my sight. Go down to the Entrance Hall."

I pointed my wand at the girls and followed them down the stairs. "Is this part of your patrol route, then?" Luna asked.

"Please be quiet." Odd, the girls were walking ahead of me, yet I heard noise coming from behind...

" _Homenum revelio_!" I cried again, and this time I did not miss. An older boy—Gryffindor, probably, sheepishly appeared behind me.

"I suppose you're part of this army too?" I sighed.

"Yes," he grunted.

"Any more of you hiding back there?"

"Nuh-uh," he said, so forcefully I thought he was hiding something, but I cast the charm again and nobody else emerged.

I led them over to the hourglasses. "Whatever you're doing," I said dryly, "I'm very impressed. Clearly you can't have gotten caught prowling too often, or there would not be so many points left for Gryffindor—and Ravenclaw—to take away."

The boy opened his mouth. Weasley stepped on his foot.

"This makes my job... _easy_ ," I said, half-hoping they'd take the hint and half-unsure what exactly I was hinting. "Twenty-five points from Gryffindor for  _each_  of you, and twenty-five points from Ravenclaw as well."

The rubies and sapphires immediately bounced into action, shrugging off gravity and shooting into the upper bulb. I resolved to learn how they worked. Maybe I could enchant a Time-Turner somehow...but no, they were apparently all broken.

"Be prepared to explain to your house—and your professors, should they ask—why Gryffindor have so few points tomorrow," I said. "It'll be more and more points taken away if I ever see you again—assuming, of course, that your houses remain in the positive numbers. If they do not..." I trailed off.

"We get it," said Weasley. "Good night, Mr. Wood."

I did not reply.

The next morning, though, the students' housemates did not appear to be ostracizing them—well, maybe Luna's were, she was sitting a few seats away from the rest of the Ravenclaw students, but that didn't seem to be a result of her losing points. Weasley and the boy, for their part, were the talk of the table, sitting among a clump of students and talking animatedly. Either they had managed to frame someone else for the loss of points, or Gryffindor had given up entirely on the House Cup competition.

Funny, the first points I'd ever given or taken had been fifty from my old house. No one could accuse me of bias!


	17. Of Hurts and Empathy

I hoped that would be the end of it. Literally  _hoped,_  in the sense that I wasn't appealing to everything already having happened, kind of, except not.

It wasn't.

At first it was that boy, on his own. I kept docking points from Gryffindor—thirty the first time, then forty, which brought them all the way down to zero. But he must have told the others where he saw me every night, because more Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws started showing up.

"Okay, come off it," I finally erupted at a pair of Hufflepuff girls. "What are you lot  _doing_  that's so important you have to be out here all the time—that's twice this week I've seen you," I pointed to the one with the braid. "—and graffiti up the place if none of it's going to stick?"

"You're a new professor, aren't you?" she giggled. "What you don't know won't hurt you."

"I can take care of myself. But what's going to hurt  _you_?"

"You aren't," she said, "or you'd have done it by now. Let's go."

"Seventy points from Hufflepuff!" I roared back.

They ignored me.

A minute later, I was joined by a panting Slytherin prefect. "Is everything okay?" he asked.

"Er...yeah." It was, really. Nobody was getting hurt, although I really wished Filch would hurry up and recover.

"I thought I heard noise."

What was he going to do, try and beat up a couple girls probably two years older than him, each? If they were in any kind of army they'd probably make short work of him. I tried to keep the peace. "Yeah. You did. I thought I was at the end of the hallway and walked into a wall. Maybe let out a choice word or two."

He giggled. "Well, if there's anything I can help with, please let me know. I  _am_  a Prefect."

And he was also kind of a runt. "I'll bear that in mind."

The end of November rolled around, still with no change I was aware of in Filch's condition. What had they  _done_  to him? That end of the month also brought the second Quidditch match of the season; Hufflepuff versus Ravenclaw. I'd stretched out my neck in preparation every night for a week, and was morbidly curious how bad an announcer Burke would manage to be.

"Captains, shake hands," I said. Neil Bradley and Zacharias Smith—the unfortunate announcer from the previous year—did so. All four captains Chasers! There had been two Seekers the previous year, but one had left school and the other was Harry Potter. Like I said, Chasers usually make pretty good captains.

"And they're off. Conrad Chambers in possession. Passes to Bradley. Chambers. Bradley. Chambers. Dodges a Bludger from Briony Stebbins. Bradley."

Well, he didn't seem at any risk of having McGonagall go after him for bias, that was for sure.

"A long throw from Desai. And Ravenclaw take the lead! Ten to zero."

Hufflepuff tied it soon after on a goal from a nervous-looking young student named William Pepper, and then Smith gave them the lead after deking Margaret Lewis, the Ravenclaw Keeper. I tried to keep my eyes open for fouls but it was a very clean game. Ravenclaw were faster and technically superior fliers, so they could stay out of Hufflepuff's way without needing to play dirty. Hufflepuff, for their part, could barely keep up with the Ravenclaws. They did, however, know how to score and Beat, which was why they were winning.

"Desai to Chambers. Bradley. No. Intercepted by Smith. Dodges a Bludger. No, this one will knock him off course. Bradley back in possession." Bradley pressed forward and shot, but Randall McTavish pulled off a spectacular diving save. Burke understated this—"deflected by McTavish, who passes to Pepper. Hufflepuff now in possession."

A couple minutes later I did have to award a penalty, against Hufflepuff for Stooging. Chambers scored to tie the game for Ravenclaw, and they were apparently quite indignant about it because they went and scored again almost immediately after play restarted.

The Ravenclaw Seeker, Frank O'Leary, swooped down to the field and Sylvia Quirke followed after, but a well-placed Bludger from Stebbins knocked O'Leary off the pace. Burke completely ignored this in favor of droning on, "Pepper. Smith. Hanson. Pepper. Hanson." Hanson would eventually score, but not before Bradley had temporarily doubled Ravenclaw's lead.

Forty-thirty Ravenclaw. Their Beaters were fast, but Stebbins and Marianne Peterson were aiming better and kept Ravenclaw on their toes. O'Leary seemed to be getting tired, or at least ready to adopt some other strategy. Burke, for his part, could do no wrong, something more easily accomplished than it sounds by doing next to nothing. I knew he could play; he'd scored several goals for Slytherin in their first game, and seemed to be on top of things. And presumably he'd been around the sport long enough to know what plays were called, yet I did not see him referencing any tactics or pointing out particularly good or bad plays.

Maybe he was just not seeing all of them. I could certainly empathize—while watching a Beater hit a Bludger with one eye and a Chaser pass to a teammate with another, I still had no idea if there was a Snitchnip going on two feet behind my back. (I  _had_  caught sight of the Snitch once during the first game. Not so in this one.) Yet, Burke was a Chaser himself, right in the thick of it—surely he'd be used to turning in every direction? As a Keeper, I'd had a little more freedom to tune some of the game out.

"...a Bludger from Gene McPierce. Hanson loses control. To Desai, Smith, still Smith, and he shoots. And the game is tied."

I caught sight of O'Leary drifting above the pitch. That was a change—after a short burst of energy, he'd drooped lower, until that unsuccessful dive. Higher still, head tilting to all sides—then, he accelerated towards the Hufflepuff end of the field and came up with the Snitch, clutching it close to his chest.

"O'Leary catches the Snitch, high above the field. Ravenclaw win, a hundred and ninety to forty."

There was some cheering from the Ravenclaws, who moved into first on goal difference. The Hufflepuffs didn't seem too disappointed—they were Hufflepuffs—and the others were quiet. Not a very exciting season so far, it seemed to be...but the season was yet young.


	18. Of Cambridge and Cruciatus

A lot of what I'd said to Professor Snape in my job interview was a downright lie. Some of it, however, was true. I wasn't that great at Healing Spells, and if a student needed anything very involved cast on them, I'd probably be more likely to go to Madam Pomfrey than attempt it myself.

But there are some things, like injured students, you really only see when you're looking for them. And not because it was dark in the places, like the corridors, where I wasn't looking. (I'd spent less time in the library during December. I often thought about trying to write to Muggles to ask them about the theory of travelling into the future, but somehow didn't think an owl addressed "To Whom It May Concern, Cambridge University" would get out of Hogwarts. I'd tried to ask Flitwick what "supercharmed" meant, but he just said it was a generic expression for anything a bunch of high-power charms were put on.)

I was a flying instructor, and I knew the risks that students took in the air. The first years really were getting better—bar a couple students, Sean Biddell of Gryffindor and Abby Bright of Hufflepuff, all of them could do something that qualified as flying (if only across the short end of the training ground). It felt pretty good, just to see that I'd helped them come all that way. I couldn't understand how my words were enough—it was something you had to  _feel—_ but I'd forced the more talented kids to try and explain, and maybe some of them broke through.

No, the real place to watch out was flight club. I was still wary of Weasley and some of the other students I'd docked points from, who kept murmuring to their fellows, but the ones I really had to keep my eye on were the overexcited second and third years. Two little girls were flying near each other, and talking, and not paying attention to where they were going, when the rightmost one fell off her broom.

Her friend nervously swooped down to join her, and skinned her knee on the landing, but she'd be fine. It was the first one I worried about. I rushed down—yes, I recognized her. A third year. Tiffany Bright, Abby's sister.

"Are you okay?" I said. "Graham, I want you to go to the castle and tell Madam Pomfrey I'm bringing an injured student up."

"I'm fine, Mr. Wood!" Bright snapped, as if oblivious to the gash which started on her wrist and appeared to run up her arm. "I mean, my butt is kind of sore, but it'll be fine."

It took me a moment to process that. "Your..." Luckily, I paused to control myself. "Your what is sore?"

"Her butt," giggled Graham, who had not moved. By this time, a crowd of other students was gathering around. Probably a good thing, I didn't need anybody flying out of sight.

"You're saying that you landed on your, er, rear?" That had been the direction she'd fallen in.

"Yep! I don't wanna fly anymore but I don't need Madam Pomfrey, honest, I'm fine."

So she'd landed on her...rear. But that didn't explain..."What about that wound on your hand? That looks nasty."

"Oh? It looks worse than it is, it's getting better now."

"Whaddaya put on them, Tiff?" asked Roger Blackwell, a dreadlocked second-year Ravenclaw.

"The Puffapod beans really do the trick," she said brightly.

"Brilliant, I have Herbology next."

"You can't just sneak Puffapod beans out of the Greenhouses!" Graham gaped, aghast.

"Sure you can, Neville does it all the time!"

"Yes, well, that's Neville," she said with an air of finality.

This couldn't be possible. Could it? Were the Carrows' warnings all veiled hints about  _greenhouse smuggling_? "As your instructor," I dryly pointed out, "as nice as it might be to care for your friend, I suggest not trying to steal anything from a greenhouse to help someone who's already getting better."

"It wouldn't be for her," said Blackwell, "well, probably, it'd be for next time."

I looked back and forth. "What do you mean, next time? Bright, where did you get that wound?"

"Detention," she said coolly.

"Detention?" I blurted. Yeah, we'd all heard stories about how far Filch was willing to go, but Dumbledore had always kept him in line. Except Dumbledore was dead. And Filch was hurt, too... "The Carrows do this to you?"

"Not usually," said Graham. "It's the other kids, mostly. Who want extra credit or house points."

"Or to study," said Bright. "If they don't practice they might not do well on their exams."

"Who cares about exams?" asked Blackwell. "The Ministry won't ask kids to cast  _Crucio_  when they're taking their N.E.W.T.s."

Graham was about to rebut when my tongue, which had been until then bouncing around nervously, caught up with my ears. "The Carrows have the older students cast  _Crucio_  on you?"

"Only if we get detention," said Blackwell. "And that's not so bad, they're not very good at it."

My mouth seemed torn between screaming and vomiting. I shoved my whistle in, then blew.

"Flight club needs to end early today," I said, "I'm sorry. Get inside."

"Please, Mr. Wood," said Bright, "you don't need to make them stop. I'm fine."

"I believe you. But I need to speak with Headmaster Snape, it's urgent."

I tapped my foot impatiently as all the students put their brooms away, then brought up the rear at a stomp. The force of my feet against the ground was so satisfying I forgot to rush. Once we got inside, though, they split up their separate ways and I went upstairs.

"Password?" demanded a gargoyle.

"Oh, come on, let me in, it's urgent."

"Mr. Wood?" Snape called from inside. "One moment." Good to his word, he opened the door the next moment. "I didn't expect you so quickly."


	19. The Muggle World

"You…" I caught my breath. "You were expecting me?"

"Of course," said Professor Snape. "I sent word for you, but you were quite fast—have you been flying through the halls, perchance?"

"Not literally."

"Very well. I thought you should be the first to hear the happy news from me."

"Happy…news?" I echoed.

"Yes. I've just been informed that Filch has made a full recovery, although he'll be taking the rest of the term off. After Christmas, however, you will be excused from patrolling duty."

Excused from patrol duty! Finally! I could leave the hallways…

…to Filch, who might turn trespassers over to the Carrows.

"Actually, Headmaster," I said slowly, "I'd be happy to stay on. More than happy."

He started pacing. "Dare I ask why that might be? You'd be about the first professor to volunteer in sixteen years."

"Well, there aren't that many non-alumni here," I reminded him. "Maybe they've had their fill of the House Cup competition, but I'm not used to it. I have to admit, it's fun to see the reaction on a first-year's face when I dock them points for being out past their curfew—or a seventh year's when I give them points for helping the first year get back to their dorm. I think they're a fascinating…part of the school. And I find that housemates' reactions can make very effective rewards...and punishments."

"They can," said Snape. "They can indeed. But suppose some houses care less than others? Or the standings are so lopsided that few even care? It doesn't feel like a very fair punishment."

"What do you think is a fair punishment?" I bellowed. " _Having students cast Unforgivable Curses on second years_?"

Snape continued pacing, but forward and backward rather than side to side. "It's very interesting how everyone places the accent on "unforgivable," as if we humans—among others—were prohibited from forgiving some actions but not others, potentially just as catastrophic. No one seems to put the emphasis on "curse." You say you grew up in the Muggle world?"

"This is not the time—"

"Then you must have learned of all the atrocities they commit against each other. Sirius Black was vilified when they thought he'd killed twelve Muggles with a single curse. You know that's a drop in a bucket next to what Muggle technology can do."

"That's beside the point! These are  _teachers and students—_ "

"—who have not deemed it fit to call  _your_  teaching habits into question, Mr. Wood. For the sake of civility, I request that you extend the same courtesy. Rest assured that as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, the safety of the students is an immeasurably higher priority of mine than the ravings of the clumsy and discontented."

"The children aren't—well, I mean..." Bright  _was_  pretty clumsy, and if anything they said was true they certainly had the right to be discontented despite how blasé they were. "You're the one that's raving, Professor."

"I will thank you not to repeat that."

"You're not welcome, and I  _will_ repeat it until I've heard of progress."

He took his seat. "If you're quite done?"

"I meant what I said about the patrol," I said, deciding then and there I  _was_  going to keep roaming the hallways whether he asked me to or not. There was no love lost between Filch and the Carrows, but I couldn't tell what he did with students. Some of the prefects looked trustworthy, some decidedly not so—others just listened to their teachers. I could only hope I sounded commanding enough.

"Then I bid you good day."

"It isn't." I turned around and stomped out of the room.

As I was angrily tramping through the castle, I ran across Professor McGonagall. I wasn't sure how much sway she held, but surely she wouldn't tolerate what was going on if she knew. "Professor?" I called.

"Oh!" she smiled. "I suppose I should ask you, too."

"Ask me what?" I said defensively. What was it with everyone expecting to see me?

"Whether you'll be staying at Hogwarts for the winter holidays."

Hmm. Yeah, I supposed the teachers could go home too. Not that I had much of a home, but...

My thoughts jumped to the one thing that could take my mind off what I'd just heard from the students. "King's Cross!" I blurted.

"Excuse me?"

"No, I, er, that came out wrong. I want to stay at Hogwarts, please, though I might go on a day trip or two. I just heard some students talking about King's Cross the other day. Now I understand why."

She paused, as if about to say something, but just smiled. "Wonderful. Then I'll be seeing you around."

"Right."

King's Cross. Of course. Why hadn't it crossed my mind before? I needed a location in the Muggle world that I knew well enough to Apparate there, but couldn't go asking around for one, as I was supposed to have grown  _up_  in the Muggle world. King's Cross, on the other hand...not only could I get there, but it was also a Muggle train station. I could pretend to be from out of town. And hope it was as centrally located as I'd sort of remembered, because I didn't have anyone to convert Muggle money.

So, on the last day of term, knowing I had to get outside the boundaries of Hogwarts anyway, I walked to Hogsmeade Station with a bunch of the students, seeing them off. The flying lessons were essentially over; all but five students could do two lengths of the pitch. (Sean and Abby were among the five.) A couple wanted to retake the test right away, but they had to wait till after holidays. I could barely believe they were paying me, given that flight club was new and that I wasn't supposed to be patrolling anymore.

Then again, they weren't paying me  _much_.

The train pulled away, and I Apparated ahead to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, then stepped out into the Muggle world. I wandered around, looking for an information desk.

"Er, 'ello," I said, with a weird accent—even I wasn't sure what it was meant to be. Not the Scottish thing I'd been trying to pull off. Something that really said "foreigner." "Izzere a library round here?"


	20. Real and Unreal

"A library?" said the Muggle train station clerk.

"Aye," I said. "Fer lookin' at books in."

"A library? Hold on a minute. Bobby?"

As somebody—Bobby—came over, I started getting nervous—if I needed to take Muggle transportation, I could be in trouble. Bobby, however, told me that there was in fact a library very close by. Thanking Bobby and his co-worker both, I started up the street.

The library was right where I'd expected it to be, thankfully, and I got in without incident. It looked like a library, albeit with Muggle contrivances scattered everywhere. The books had call numbers on them—proper letters and numbers!

Shelves were put together in sections; some large books and some smaller ones for children. Apparently young Muggle children get the books with the most interesting pictures—the older children had to make do with pictures on the covers. I paused for a while to page through a "new release" in the children's section. Looked cool, but I didn't think I was allowed to check books out of the library.

Adults had fiction and non-fiction. Where was I even supposed to begin? If Muggles had access to a book about dragons or Quidditch they'd probably call it fiction even if it was completely true. Time travel was apparently a real thing, but it was esoteric enough that I had never heard it was possible. When they said that the theory of it was known to Muggles, did that meant it had never actually happened in the Muggle world?

Sighing, I went to another information desk. "Hullo. I, er, I'd like a, a, a book. About, er, time-t-travel."

"Time travel?" asked a bemused young woman. "Do you mean a novel?"

"Er, n-no. Something with...ah...scienceies! Theorizin' and suchlike."

She began pressing her fingers on the desk. They made noises. Then she took a little piece of paper and a little pencil and wrote something down. "This is the call number you want to go to."

"The call number..." I pointed to one section. "In the non-fictions?"

"Yes, that's right. Would you like me to help you find it?"

If that was a normal thing..."Yes, please."

I could have done it myself. It was just walk past the one, two, three hundreds. Well,  _that_  much I could have done myself. What happened next was pretty cool. We walked past the four-hundreds, and into a darker part of the library.

She reached out and touched a device on the wall, moving it from pointing down to pointing up. And then, light came shining out of the ceiling, right over our heads where the books were!

I gaped.

She kept walking like that happened every day.

I made a note of the place, so I could come back there and experiment on it.

Into the five-hundreds...past the five-tens... She handed me a book. "This what you're looking for?"

I paged through. Wormholes this and dimensionality that. "Er. Maybe. I think so. I'll have a look."

"All right. I'll be back at the desk if you need any help."

"Okay."

I found a nice comfortable seat by a window and began to read. Starting from the beginning

_...which can be derived by assuming that the speed of light (among other laws of physics) is frame-invariant. Assume a horizontal elevator..._

_...while time travel to the past appears fundamentally impossible_  (hah),  _there is no inherent barrier under this model against "time-travelling to the future." By journeying at such a high speed, less subjective time passes for the traveller than the reference frame..._

_...giving rise to the so-called twin paradox, which alludes to both the incongruity of twins being (physically and mentally) different ages, as well as the possibility that the Earthbound twin could claim that they, in fact, had been moving while their twin had been staying still. Only the acceleration experienced during the change of directions can resolve..._

_...has been observed with muons, particles that enter the atmosphere by means of solar..._

_...time travel to the past is impossible, on the other hand, because it would result in unreal, imaginary numbers..._  (Watch who you're calling imaginary!)

_...more fanciful suppositions include "wormholes," speculative objects in outer space which..._

_...imperceptible at ordinary speeds, and even the extraordinary speeds achieved by spacecraft..._

Assuming I understood, Muggles had fancy boxes that moved in different directions very quickly, and if you shone a flashlight (what was that? Something like a wand with  _Lumos_  in effect, or like the things in the ceiling?), you could show that when you were going very quickly, you spent less time than other people. And so if you went on a trip very very quickly and turned around to get back to where you started, even if it only took so long for you, it'd have taken longer for everyone else. So you weren't going instantaneously, but it'd still be the future. Relatively speaking. The word "relatively" came up a lot. Only, it was only a theory, because none of the Muggle transportation things were fast enough to make a big difference. Even spaceships. Which, I assumed, were ships. Only they went up in the air? That part wasn't clear either. But they did have evidence for it because of invisible things that fell out of the sky. Good news was there was nothing to do with killing other copies of yourselves—that line still gave me the shivers—but then again, it was mostly theoretical.

I tried to remember what I'd read about Brady Curtis. He'd taken fifteen minutes...on a supercharmed broom...and wound up two hours into the future? Yes, this was it! The Department of Mysteries had cooked up some charm that let a broom go fast, faster than Muggle things, but that wasn't really practical. This had to be it.

Only, if they weren't releasing the charm and had kept it secret for eighty-some years, how was I supposed to rediscover it? Would Apparition and Floo Powder do the trick—if they were _instantaneous_...I peered down to the page that had a bunch of square roots on it and tried to do the calculations. More imaginary numbers, it looked like, maybe infinitely big ones. No, that didn't make sense. And Apparition and Floo Powder weren't  _exactly_ instantaneous, were they? What about Portkeys?

I sighed, and put the book back. The lights were still shining. Brilliant.

I walked over to the thing she'd been touching and tried waving it side to side. Couldn't budge. Front to back—still nothing. No, the only thing to be done was rotate it downwards. Just before it went horizontal, the light disappeared.

Fantastic!

I let go, and it popped back up where it was. I tried it again. Same thing. Hadn't it been dark and stayed dark? I rotated it as far down as it would go, and that time, it stayed put.

I pushed it up again. Somehow, the light was connected to the thing, and despite all the book had said about the speed of light being a finite thing, it looked pretty instantaneous.

I turned it back off.

"Oi!" someone yelled. "That'll give me migraines!"

"Sorry!" I hastily called.

Fun fact: despite all the stereotypes, no one ever tells you to be quiet in a library, even if you're yelling.

I walked out the door. I figured I'd better get back to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters to Apparate—couldn't tell where there'd be Muggles watching. Again, it was a short trip and no trouble.

Walking back to the castle, I wondered why anyone would want to destroy the Muggle world. It was  _awesome_.


	21. Of Owls and Obfuscation

It was a thinner crowd than usual for Christmas. The professors of the "Three A's"—Astronomy, Arithmancy, and Ancient Runes—had all left for the holiday. Professor Binns never really came down to meals, of course. Plenty of students, but then again not too many and that was by the year's already-thin standards.

Late Christmas Eve the professors had gathered for what turned out to be a very brief reading—McGonagall interrupted Amycus and they had a short, heated debate about the relative merits of reading about "unwashed sheep-herders" (Amycus' phrasing) and "abstraction you are twisting in order to obfuscate" (McGonagall). Truth be told, I wasn't sure who was obfuscating who, but Professor Sprout told them to be civil on Christmas and they, very grudgingly, complied.

I slept in, not really expecting any presents, but woke to find a tiny package from Professor McGonagall that quivered a bit as I drew near it.  _Thought you might enjoy this, Minerva_ , she'd written.

Curious, I opened it to find a miniature figurine of Emilio Cabañas, the Peruvian genius of a Chaser. Of course, the Quidditch World Cup would be the next year in Australia—but would they hold off on it for almost a full year, so it could be in their summer?

Emilio paced the floor while I tried to think of what would be open on Christmas Day—I wanted to give McGonagall a present in return. Could I wait a while, pass as Oliver-of-1998, and snag her a free ticket to Puddlemere's next opening day without anyone telling the younger version of me? Was I going to give free tickets to my family? Why couldn't I remember anything important?

Wait, no, I had an idea. I'd just need a couple more days to wait, was all. Wouldn't want to bother people on Christmas. In the meantime, I walked up to the Owlery to send off a few letters—it'd help to give people warning.

"Now, if they write back to you, whatever they say, come back to me. _Me_ , here, in Hogwarts Castle, do you understand? No matter what the envelope says," I asked the owl. It just sort of pecked at me. What did they know, anyway? They were just beasts.

I half-expected to run into a student or someone, sending an actual Christmas card, but the Owlery was empty bar the owls and me. Maybe I'd just slept in too long. I was about the only one left for breakfast. But by lunch everyone was back. "Thanks so much for your present, Minerva," I said—it was still so  _weird_  calling her that. "I, er, have something lined up for you as well. But it'll take a couple days to come through."

"Thank you," she smiled.

Trelawney started pulling crackers with the students, who had all congregated at Slytherin table since there were so few of them. What would the Great Hall look like after they got rid of houses, I wondered? Silly question, but I was curious.

I felt like doing something festive—singing Christmas songs, maybe? The only other person who really wanted to sing, however, was Nearly Headless Nick. He sounded like drunk Jenkins at a party. I didn't know ghosts could drink egg nog or anything, but he sure faked it well.

Somewhere, my family—and  _I—_ were sitting around a fire together, playing games or something. Worst-case scenario, it'd still be two and a half years before I could speak to any of them again. Not the kinds of thoughts I wanted to be moping about on Christmas.

So I went flying, over the lake and over the snow, trying to clear my head. I guess it worked, sort of, as there was nothing particular I remembered thinking about. Except that it was cold.

When I got back, I figured I'd test some charms on the Comet again. The nice thing about having the broom somewhat broken was that I had no qualms about using it as a test subject. I'd tried every Acceleration Charm I could think of, but never got anything more than a very bumpy ride.

It'd have been nice, I figured, if I could find the secret before the start of term. It wouldn't be so bad a place to leave the staff, would it? The bulk of the first years had already, officially, passed their test. I wondered when I'd get back—right when I left, or would five months have gone by in 2000 as well? Maybe I could control when I went to.

Since the Acceleration Charms weren't working, I tried to shorten my stick instead. (That's really not that funny. The Muggle book of sciencies had said that  _everything_ that's going fast looks shorter, whether it be a broomstick or a spaceship or a helicopter, and presumably even teeny tiny things that are too small to see anyway but Muggle sciencers can look at them.)

Again, it didn't work. Festive day.

I wondered what the other professors were doing...as far as I knew, none of them were married or had kids or anything, but at the same time they weren't joining my renditions of "God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs," so clearly they had something to do.

Over the weekend, I Apparated to the Puddlemere pitch on a whim, bringing a school broom. Yeah, I sort of hoped I was not ever going to bring it back (at least not for three years), but that was the least of my problems.

I flew through the goalposts. All of them, both ends of the pitch, from the front and back. Nothing happened. I hadn't expected much to, truthfully—I hadn't cast any spells on them, not wanting to travel to a third destination. All things considered, I had a pretty cushy post at Hogwarts. Still, I had to try.

Monday after Christmas, the school owl came back. To me. I could only hope it'd been exactly where I sent it, and nowhere else, otherwise I wouldn't be in trouble.

Well.  _I_ wouldn't be in trouble.  _I_ would...

...no, that can't be right.


	22. A Matter of Time

I tore the package open, and everything looked right. There was last season's program, the Puddlemere United starters on the front cover. Jenkins was hovering, doing her own thing, and the Chasers were gesturing animatedly towards Emilio, who was standing on top of the program. The program-cover Oliver, meanwhile, was squinting, very confused, as if he was trying to place where he'd seen me before. At least the Beaters waved to me.

I thought of my Gryffindor teammates—it felt like maybe practices would be more pleasant with more people like them. Angelina Johnson probably could have played for whatever team she wanted by 2000, if only because the rosters were thinner. Harry Potter, of course, was an incredible Seeker in his day. Maybe even the younger Weasleys could have cut it. Charlie certainly could have, but he'd decided against Quidditch back when I was still in school.

No, no use dwelling on what couldn't have...couldn't be. They really weren't that pleasant. They'd given me heat for scheduling so many practices, teased me, everything. My Puddlemere teammates were serious, they put up with me—and they would again when I got back to my own time.

I flipped to the inside back where, true to their word, "my" teammates had signed their names, assuming it was their contemporary who wanted a favor for a friend. I took out my quill and added mine. Oliver Wood. It sent shivers down my spine to write my full name for the first time since I'd arrived in the past.

Hopefully I hadn't signed enough paperwork as Fergus for McGonagall to notice the similarities in the signatures. These things ran in families, didn't they? I could always claim that, as Fergus, switching to Wood rather than Bailey, I'd just copied what I saw in my half-brother's autograph.

I waited till the next morning before slipping it to McGonagall after breakfast. "Sorry it's late," I shrugged. "People were busy with Christmas and all."

"Thank you!" she smiled.

I guess it didn't look like much next to the figurine. Not unless she opened to the inside back. But why would she? Did I walk away and look cheap as well as late? Or tell her and look like I oversplurged, or have to go through a "no, seriously, it wasn't a big deal" cover story?

Must have shown my worry in my face. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yeah. Yeah. Er...Happy Christmas, Professor."

"Minerva, please," she smiled. "Sometimes you're more respectful than the students."

The next day was New Year's Eve. Hagrid had a good deal of mead that he was sharing with all—I declined, but a couple of students who were of age tried some, and Sprout and Trelawney seemed to be getting a bit tipsy.

The Carrows, who looked on pace to be Hogwarts' most humorless Deputy Heads, were less than enthused at Hagrid's suggestion of staying up till midnight and singing. "What are you going to do?" asked Snape. "Run out and stage a surprise birthday party?"

"I don't see you planning on warbling in dialect," said Alecto.

"Certainly not; I also find it rather senseless to celebrate the arbitrary marks on one piece of paper or the next. I, however, go to bed at a civilized hour, and hence can make less desperate excuses." Had he  _appointed_ them both? They didn't seem to be getting along well at all. "Have a...pleasant evening, Rubeus."

He had a point. As a kid, I'd always liked the "staying up late" aspect of things, but there was really nothing about a new year that  _felt_  different from an old one. Just like with birthdays—there was nothing about turning a new age that made me  _feel_  different. But my birthday was always right before the beginning of the school year, so once I got back, I felt so much older than the kids a year below me.

Of course, that was before I became a time-traveller.

When would the new year really feel like 1998? Opening Day, of course—Puddlemere played...Wigtown, I thought...in the first match. Less excitingly, the Week of Shadows, although they'd be slightly less shadowy for me as I'd know what was going on. As much as anybody did, which wasn't much. Maybe it makes more sense to say I knew it would only take a week. And then things would be back—literally for me—to normal, then forward to the new normal. Not that the next few years would be much different than these last few months. Things were just more efficient. Fewer criminals.

"Shall auld acquaintance be forgot," warbled Celestina Warbeck (and McGonagall under her breath—I had the presence of mind to pretend I didn't see her), "and never brought to mind?"

Yes, I thought. Yes, they should. Just because other people were going to throw their lives away didn't mean I had to dwell in regret.

Granted, they weren't my  _late_ friends yet, just my (or at least the other Oliver's)  _old_  friends. Time travel complicated everything.

_Many confused wizards and witches have killed either their past or future selves by mistake..._

All right, I thought to myself, let's say I Apparated to my flat, the me who was there was confused, and killed me. Well, no, that couldn't happen, because I would have remembered killing a weird stranger who looked a lot like me on New Year's Eve of 1997. But if I  _did_ , and he killed me, then...I'd be dead. And he'd still be alive. And grow up, and turn into me, and come back, in time to be killed. That'd be killing one's future self.

But, if I killed  _him_ , then  _he'd_  be dead, and never live past twenty-one. So he wouldn't have been alive in Puddlemere in July of 2000. So he wouldn't have come back here. So he, I, wouldn't have been around to kill him. So he'd still be alive. And grow up. And come back and kill himself.

You couldn't kill your past self! It was impossible!  _But it had happened!_

 _When visiting the past by Time-Turner, the traveler carries out events that_ had already happened  _by the time they came from (whether they were aware of them or not)..._

So people travelling  _by Time-Turner_  definitely couldn't kill their past selves, or they'd never have survived long enough to come back in time in the first place.

_Rumors involving the possibility that other objects could allow for travel into the past remain unsubstantiated..._

but they weren't unsubstantiated, I'd done it. Not with Time-Turners. With other devices, that worked differently. And, I realized, so had other people—including the ones who'd killed their past selves. The real world had the young people's dead bodies in them,  _and_  older versions of those same people...but maybe not the same older versions. Older versions who'd been able to grow up...elsewhere? Elsewhen? Elsehow? In different realities. With different ways events could play out.

I'd gone back to a time before the Week of Shadows. A time when professors had some students cast the Cruciatus Curse on others...but family members of those in the resistance, s _till_ a proper resistance, not yet a lost cause, roamed the school at night, leaving messages of rebellion. And maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to sit back and wait for the future to happen.

For the first time in far too long, whichever way you counted it, I felt hope.

I thought of Angelina. The Weasleys. Harry. And the question was no longer "but how could I try making a difference?" The question was, "how couldn't I?"

Not wanting to betray my complete ignorance of Scots, I hummed along as McGonagall sang "and gie's a hand o' thine." Midnight dawned, we crossed our hands, and we stepped into 1998.


	23. Of Practice and Provocation

Granted, some things were easier said than done.

My first order of business, I decided, needed to be finding out what Dumbledore's Army actually was. But the hallways seemed a little thinner, and a girl I took for Luna the Ravenclaw from behind was actually a Ravenclaw prefect. So, I concentrated on finding where the different prefects were patrolling. They'd apparently split up the castle so everyone was tracing out the same, separate, areas each night, although a lot of them didn't seem to know their way around quite as well as they should have. Some of the prefects turned trespassers over, some didn't, and there were others who I hadn't noticed catching anyone yet. (Hufflepuff house, I'm looking at you. Come on.)

The first weekend back, though, I had Slytherin-Ravenclaw to ref. Shockingly, no one new had volunteered to commentate (bar Zacharias Smith, whose application had been "lost" by McGonagall). Burke was playing again, so we were all stuck with Mallory. Not that she was  _that_  bad. She just...wasn't doing the long-term quality of the job any good.

Wait a minute, I realized, she was a  _first_  year. They could be stuck with her for six more years. Not even Lee Jordan had taken over until his second year. Or would they even need commentary without...

 _...maybe something will change_ , I told myself.  _Maybe they still will have the house tournament, and houses._

Despite nearly twenty-four years of practice, the whole "not knowing the future" thing took a lot of getting used to.

"And they take off," said Mallory. Good start. "Bwadley to Chambus." Not so good. At least Gryffindor-Ravenclaw was the final so we still had a while before "Chambers intercepted by Chambers." The only other sibling combination playing Quidditch were the McPierce brothers, both of whom were Ravenclaw Beaters.

They were seeing little action, though, as Crabbe and Goyle of Slytherin dominated the Bludgers. The fast Ravenclaw Chasers managed to avoid them, generally, and each of them scored before Slytherin got on the board. The Slytherin Keeper, Julius Ramsey, was enormous but not very skilled with his broom, and on Bradley and Desai's goals, was hovering around the wrong goalpost entirely before looking like a fool as he belatedly zoomed over.

After that, though, things didn't go so well. It started on a Slytherin attack, with Burke expertly intercepting another Bradley pass. He alone had made more interceptions than the Ravenclaw team put together, although Vaisey usually ended up dropping the Quaffle—hence the Ravenclaw lead. That time, though, he dodged a Bludger from "Aawon McPeoce" ( _why_?) and shot for goal. Lewis had been getting lucky until then, but didn't seem lucky enough to save that one. I was concentrating on Goyle, who was inexpertly preparing for a Bludger attack, so only through the corner of my eye did I see Burke.

I saw him zoom towards Lewis, crashing into her and almost knocking her off her broom before poking the Quaffle in.

Okay, now things were getting a little complicated. I blew my whistle. "Unprovoked attack on an opposing player, penalty to Ravenclaw!"

"It was provoked!" blustered an enraged Vaisey, his Adam's Apple bulging out. So spontaneously, I sort of believed him. But what could Lewis have done?

"How so?" I asked.

"Called me a...Muggle-lover."

"Didn't say there was any shame in it!" taunted Lewis. "I've seen you snogging the—"

"He's lying!"

"Penalty to Ravenclaw," I repeated, "and you'd both be better served by keeping your mouths shut and your brooms in the air."

"But ref—"

"Next time score the goal and leave her be."

"I don't know what's going on, it looks like a penalty to Wavenclaw but they haven't done anything yet. Oh, no, heow comes Desai. A Double Eight Loop fwom Wamsey, but Desai to make it foddy-ten Wavenclaw." Mallory was composed given that her house was winning, but still clearly animated and actually talking about what was going on. "Play wesumes."

From then on, things were tense. There were no fouls given, but if the exhaustive list had included "insinuating forgery of an opponent's identification card," there probably would have been. The McPierce brothers were inexhaustible in their trash-talking; unfortunately for Ravenclaw, every insult aimed was a Bludger forgone, and Slytherin had the run of the place as far as Beating was concerned. The Ravenclaw Chasers had to work to stay on their brooms.

"Ukuhaht to Boke. Boke flying, evades Chambus. Malfoy accelewates, no, nevah mind, he's just toning. Boke still, shakes off Lewis, and scos. Game tied."

And how. Maybe it was something too subtle for a first year to pick up on, but Burke was almost single-wandedly dominating the game, even when it was Urquhart getting credited with the goals. He really was good—and, unlike Vaisey and Ramsey, deaf to the insults being slung around after that first penalty. He might've managed one or two of his own when the McPierce brothers flew too close, but all things considered he was playing it very cool.

"Bwadley to Desai. A Bludguh from Cwabbe, dwops it, Boke theyo to pick it up. Boke flying, on his own, Chambus speeds up to twy and keep up with him, I don't see how it'll help. Oh, Wavenclaw in Hawkshead Attacking Fomation now, Boke slips wight past them! And scos, Slythewin take the lead fo the fost time, fifty-foty."

Was that really their first lead all day? They'd been tipped for the Quidditch Cup—with no Muggle-borns on the Quidditch team the previous year, they hadn't had the turnover in talent that some other teams did. But the season was short—bad luck here and there, or the season just not getting completed at all, and those were your chances down the drain.

Trust me. I know all about this.

Anyway, there was no telling how long the game would go. I wasn't particularly interested in watching for more fouls or near misses—sometimes it got, in a twistedly merciful way, too loud to hear Hitchens above the jibes being slung back and forth. Some of the fans got into it—Hufflepuff and Gryffindor students seemed to be supporting Ravenclaw slightly more, and just when they were launching into another round of "Oy, Vincent, what've you conquered lately?" (marginally clever the first time around, less so on the seventh), O'Leary broke into a dive. A Bludger from Goyle caught him in the elbow, but not before he'd grasped the Snitch, a foot above the ground.

"Wavenclaw wins!" beamed Mallory, sounding properly celebratory for the first time all day. "Wavenclaw wins, a hundwed and ninety to fifty! Slythewin fall to oh and two, Wavenclaw wise to two and oh."

"Wavenclaw are always wise," grinned Bradley as he dismounted. "That's our thing."


	24. Losing Track of Time

Dumbledore's Army.

What did it  _mean_?

They clearly weren't above-board. Which probably meant, against the Carrows. Against the Ministry.

For...Dumbledore?

Harry Potter was Undesirable Number One. He was wanted for the  _murder_ of Dumbledore. The Ministry liked Dumbledore. Respected him. It was Potter they were out to get. Granted, he hadn't...when I'd come from, hadn't seemed to have gotten a fair trial or anything. But Potter was an Undesirable. Dumbledore had been...

What  _had_  he been? I hadn't bothered to read  _The Life and Lies—_ seemed pretty trashy stuff, that Skeeter woman always was rubbish when she was writing about Quidditch. But apparently, he wasn't all that brilliant.

Would he have started an underground army of students?

Everybody seemed to know the answer, but me.

Could I write to Angelina or someone outside? With my teammates it had been different—just one thing, and hopefully they wouldn't ask the other me if my friend had appreciated the autographs. But Angelina had kept working on me right up to the Week of Shadows, so I'd pretty much have to tell her I was a time-traveller if this version of me wrote to her.

Which wouldn't be so bad, I figured. She probably didn't know any more about time travel than I had. I could just tell her I figured the future could be changed, and I was going to change it to something a little more pleasant than what I'd remembered.

_Dear Angelina,_

_Hi. This is a little weird. This is Oliver Wood writing to you. I know I've kind of blown you off, but that isn't really me. I'm actually a time-traveller from the future. A future I don't want to go back to. I want to change what happens to make things better. I know you and the other strikers are in contact with some of the resistance. Let me know if I can help. Write to me as Fergus Wood at Hogwarts. I'll explain when I meet you._

_Sincerely,_

_Oliver_

I actually got to be sincere. That was pretty cool.

I was going to go directly to the Owlery, but somewhere during the "how do I  _explain_  this?" struggle of writing the thing, I'd lost track of time.

I know, right?

The point was, it was time for Flight Club, and I was running late. I hustled over to the pitch, and to my surprise, found a bigger crowd than usual.

"What're you doing here?" I asked Arminius Harcourt, the Ravenclaw first year.

"I'm gonna fly," he grinned. "I'm not in lessons anymore so that means I can come fly with all of you, doesn't it?"

"...Yeah, I guess so," I smiled. "Great to have you."

"And Eileen and everybody can too?" he grinned, waving at another cluster of first years.

"Oh. Yeah! I guess so! That's brilliant." Seriously, why was I the first flying instructor in however many years to think of this? "Okay...um...give me a minute, I forgot what I had planned." Another lie. Shuntbumps seemed a lot less promising when there was this much size disparity between students.

"Alright," I finally said, "we're gonna try a new game. Not sure how this'll work so let me know what you think of it. This one is going to train you to fly in different positions, it's called Goalposts. How many of you can fly one- or no-handedly?"

Maybe not the best way to phrase that question, as a lot of hands went up even from first-years who should have known that I knew they could do no such thing. The question had not been "who's small enough to be a Seeker," and wasn't meant to be. Still, I didn't think it would be a good idea to go singling out first years for embarrassment, so I let them be. "We're gonna need lots of two-handed fliers, as well," I added, but no hands went down.

"Okay," I said, picking out two of the older students—Weasley and Malcolm Jones. "Here's how it works. One person stands on the pitch, I'll do that, arms outstretched, here. Now, Jones, I want you to hover just above the ground, so that I can reach your broom. Not that high, just—there."

"Just here?" he echoed. He was not very high up at all.

"That's right. Now stay put, but reach your right arm out, away from your broom, so that it's angled like mine, see?"

"Oh," gaped Jones, unsteadily complying. Maybe I should have had him put his good arm on his broom, but someone needed to do this eventually.

"Now, Weasley, you're going to go hover so Jones can grab  _your_  broom, and reach your arm out so the next person can do it. Do you all see what we're doing?"

"Are you building a tower?" called out a fifth-year. "Shouldn't you be higher up?"

"No. We're going to try forming a  _ring_. So some of you can fly through them, that's the goal."

"Oh. Lemme try, I wanna go next!"

"No, me!"

"Form a line behind Weasley—if there's too many, start work on a second ring."

It turned out that the "ring" was more like a diamond with sharp corners. And, as I suspected, the real trouble was at the corners. It took two tries for the person at the first corner to be settled in, and three different people tried and failed to top it off before a flexible Slytherin fourth-year managed the trick.

Our loop finally finished when I reached out to grab hold of a Hufflepuff second-year. Immediately, other students began clamoring to sail through—and the first attempt hit the girl at the top, breaking the loop.

"Next time, aim lower," I sighed.

"Aim for you?" asked the Gryffindor who'd tried to fly through.

"Er, whoever's on bottom should be able to move a little more without causing that." I pointed at the pile of disheveled third-years. "But not me, per se. I'm going to walk around and see how other people do-the rest of you, split into groups, make several of them."

Other people did almost as poorly. Twice little Eileen tried, and failed, to get on top, and wound up making sure she hadn't lost her quill. A third group was actually successful—there were very few of them, but they'd managed to find a tiny second-year that could just sneak through. By the time I got back to the first group, they were having a little more success. A bit counterintuitively, the smallest kids were on the bottom and the biggest ones were on top—they were more comfortable fliers and could most easily bend themselves to handle the corners. Meanwhile, those who couldn't form the loops themselves were taking turns racing each other through all of them. They squeezed through the third, easily handled the first, and more often than not caused another crash on the second.

They were quite resilient, ignoring all the bruises they picked up along the way. Many of them seemed to have more injuries than the crashes could account for, and again I wondered what was happening inside the school. If I'd been less rubbish at healing spells, I would've asked if there was anything I could do, but as it was I nodded to Blackwell and Graham halfway through and pointed out a couple second-years.  _Puffapods_? I mouthed.

"Yeah, yeah, we're way ahead of you," said Graham.

Well, that was probably good.


	25. Stalling For Time

Flight club ended, and we went back to the castle. I was the last one to leave the pitch. But as I got close to the front door, ready to head off to the Owlery, I heard a voice from up ahead.

"Ginny. Ginny!"

Weasley, who had been talking to that Gryffindor boy, whirled around to face Eileen.

"We...we have to go back out to the pitch."

"The Quidditch pitch? Why?"

"I left..." She looked around nervously. "Something important out there."

"I used to lose things all the time," smiled the boy. "C'mon, let's go."

"Whaddaya mean, something important?" said Ginny. "You found all your quills, didn't you?"

"Let's go outside," said the boy.

There was no need to rush as far as the owl went, I told myself. I was in charge of flight club, and if they were still on the pitch, they were my responsibility. Besides, if it was Ginny, that boy, and a girl who spoke guardedly...it might have been my chance to find out what Dumbledore's Army was all about.

"It's okay if..." I was walking behind them, keeping my distance, I could barely make out what the boy was saying. "...you'll be fine."

"But you..." Eileen began.

"...more important for...any other way." Weasley.

One step closer, and I could just make out the boy's voice. "The teachers are going to start watching all the mail that goes in and out of the school."

I couldn't help myself. "What?"

They whirled to face me. "Mr. Wood!" smiled Weasley. "There's no need for you to come out here—we're just picking Eileen's stuff up."

"It's my fault she lost it, isn't it?" I said. "You were flying upside-down, poor thing."

"We can handle ourselves," said Eileen.

"I'm sure you can. But I'm curious about the mail—I haven't been watching anybody's mail except my own."

"Carrows probably don't trust you yet," Weasley shrugged. "Take it as a badge of honor."

"Carrows are watching the mail?"

"Can't believe it took 'em this long, must've learned from Um—" began the boy, before Ginny cut him off with a "Shut it. C'mon, Eileen, let's go get your stuff."

It was a long walk back up to the castle.

I didn't do as much research in the library as January continued. I was pretty sure my plans went beyond the scope of even the Restricted Section's authors, and I wanted to try and make sure the present was a little less horrible before jumping back to the future. So between that and flying lessons being more sporadic (I still scheduled time with the five remaining first years), I could have had time to try and network with the resistance, but that wasn't very easy.

I worked on practicing Healing Charms—flight club gave me a good excuse for trying to shrink some of the students' bruises. A few of them picked up on what I was doing, and were good sports about letting me try even when I was pants at it.

Even for "educational purposes," I still refused to let them play Creaothceann.

How could I reach Angelina? Or anybody? The Floo Network had been drastically downsized, and I didn't know her house well enough to Apparate there. I could send her a letter from the Owl Office, but how could the Owl Office get back to me? Unless I just told her to meet me on a certain day and time...

There was, I knew, a better way. Even if the Carrows were censoring the mail, they wouldn't think anything of a seventh year wanting to get together with her family. All I had to do was get Ginny to—no, even better! The Weasley twins had a joke shop in Diagon Alley! That would work.

So, after Sean Biddell finally flew two lengths of the pitch, I walked to Hogsmeade and Apparated to Diagon Alley.

It looked even gloomier than I'd left it. Beggars on the streets, posters of Undesirables on the windows that weren't boarded up. Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes was almost obnoxiously bright in comparison, with a sign reading,  _Try Our New Fake Wands—No One Will Ever Want To Steal Magic From You!_

A set of wands—they looked really convincing, if they were fakes—sent up sparks from the window. I went inside and picked one up. A moment later, it produced a farting noise. And stench.

I laughed in spite of myself—the twins really were brilliant. "Oi! George!" Fred bellowed. "Someone likes my window display!"

"It's  _our_ window display, and I can hear just fine," George called back. Both of them approached; one of them did a double-take. "Are you—"

"It's me," I smiled weakly. "Oliver Wood."

"We'll find out who he is," said the other one grimly. And then he pointed his wand in my face! "What did you call Angelina the last time you spoke with her?"

The last time  _I_  spoke with her? He really didn't mean  _I_. It was the end of January...when had I last seen her? Early in October she had come over and told me I needed to clean out my bathroom more, but I'd seen her more recently than that. Hadn't I? Stalling for time, I asked, "Nice wand you've got there. Is that another one of the fakes?"

"Answer the question," he hissed. All seriousness. They were identical twins, it should have been me wondering who  _they_ were, not the other way around!

"I...no, listen, I can explain, that's what I'm here to—"

"Answer. The. Question. Or get out."

"Listen, no, you can send  _him_  an owl, Oliver, get him to—"

_Boom_. A spell caught me in the chest and I was thrown backwards, smashing into the wands. The stench of farting filled the air, and I Apparated away before the other one could curse me, panting and waving the air in front of my face as I emerged into Hogsmeade. Idiot.  _Idiot_. I wasn't the real Oliver, but that didn't mean I had to tell them that straight away. And they'd probably warn the rest of the resistance against me, too.

I started back to Hogwarts. Whatever I was going to do, I had to try on my own.


	26. Behind the Times

Things, shockingly, got even harder. A few days after that, Snape informed us at staff meeting that in order to assist Filch and the prefects,  _all_  the staff would need to take turns rotating to patrol the corridors. Furthermore, "I strongly recommend that staff whose day it is not respect the curfew as well—there have been some further incidents with unruly students, and I would regret seeing any further injuries to the staff."

"Excuse me, sir," I replied. " _What_  incidents? It's frustrating being new on staff and not keeping up with everything. I often feel like I'm expected to know more than is spelled out for me, and if you could just keep us all more up-to-date I wouldn't always feel so behind the times."

"The Carrows are also new on staff, and they have kept admirably...up-to-date."

"They're also the Deputy Heads."

"I am aware of my school's hiring decisions," he glared.

"Headmaster, am I included in this rotation?" asked Professor Binns.

"You are on staff, so, yes, you are."

"Do feel free to ask your, ah, fellows to assist as well," sniffed Alecto Carrow. "The Bloody Baron has proven most recalcitrant in identifying wrongdoers."

"Apparently you all are my fellows," said Binns. "Please assist me on alternating nights."

"And myself?" said Firenze, the centaur.

" _Yes_ ," hissed Snape, almost irritated.

"Very well," he said coolly. I got the feeling that Snape wouldn't necessarily approve of his style of patrolling.

There were sixteen of us, which meant I'd barely have hall duties twice a month. Officially—in practice I tried to get out as much as I could and see if there was anything going on. I was pleasantly surprised—to the extent that McGonagall, Flitwick, and company saw graffiti, they'd dock points but usually not report to the Carrows. Professor Sprout, that old softy, even ignored two Slytherins who were up after hours (snogging pretty heavily and oblivious to everything else; I guess in uncertain times, everybody thinks there's no time to lose, even ones on...ones who  _might turn out_  to be on the winning side).

The Wednesday in February that was officially my night...nothing. Zip. The prefects on their duties, looking just as bored as I was. Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat, who still looked like she was on her first life and going strong. I checked the hourglasses, just in case I was docking points again—Slytherin still had a comfortable lead, but the others had enough to take away. Except I didn't have any need to take any away.

Was this just fate taunting me? Letting me think I could make a difference, and then getting in the way?

No, I'd never believed in a "personal" fate before, there was no need to start then. I kept doing what I was doing, unofficially patrolling most nights. It was hard to know what they kept me on staff for, given that two more first years had passed their flying lessons. Just Abby Bright and Damian Podmore left.

Granted, the salary I was drawing suggested they weren't keeping me on staff for much. I should have been putting more money aside—I wasn't saving for the summer. So after staff meeting one day, I pulled McGonagall aside. "Can we stay here over the summer?"

"If you want," she said. "It is not common, but under these circumstances...I suppose it would be feasible, yes."

"Do I have to pay or anything?"

"I presume that arrangements can be made. But it can be a rather unwelcoming place over the summer...surely you have friends that could take you in?"

"In the wizarding world? No. And I don't want to put my Muggle family in danger."

" _Fergus_ ," she said, stressing the name a bit too much for comfort, "surely you have some friends among magicians."

"Oh aye," I grinned. "Aberdeen—they can be a bit rambunctious sometimes, my teammates, though. Is all."

"We all must make some sacrifices," she said snippily.

"I know, I know. I...if you have time, I just had some other, random, questions. You were Deputy Headmistress under Dumbledore?"

"Yes," she said.

I forgot to answer the question I'd been planning on asking, and the next one pretty much burst out of my mouth. "Why didn't you take over? Or even stay on in that job?"

She paused a long time to answer, and I was mentally kicking myself—if it hadn't been for the question that I really wanted to ask I would have just given up and left, but she did eventually speak. "You must know that we cannot expect things to remain the same forever."I really hoped they didn't remain like that. "Having me stay in such a capacity would have prevented the...that is to say, hamstrung Headmaster Snape as he tried to...set his own mark on the school."

"Oh, and what's his mark?" I shot back again. The impulsiveness really had to stop.

She waited a moment before saying, "He hired you, didn't he?"

There was that.

"Minerva," I said, trying to keep my voice level, "you knew Dumbledore. Would he ever have put together an army?"

"An army?" she repeated. "Sometimes I forget that you didn't go here." I tried not to react. "Do you know who Gellert Grindelwald is?"

"Grindel...wald? I think I read about him in a book. A Dark Wizard from a long time ago?" That was really about all I knew, although I felt like I was missing something important.

"More or less. He was the commander of a vast army in Central Europe in the first half of the century. Dumbledore defeated him in a duel."

"That sounds about right."

"What I'm saying is that Dumbledore often preferred to handle things alone, when he could. He would not have formed an army unless it was necessary."

Well, that settled that. An army to defeat Voldemort was one thing, and I wouldn't have been too surprised if Dumbledore had been responsible for the outside resistance. But an army of _schoolchildren_? No, that wasn't his doing.


	27. Wasting Time

Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday that year, and the mood was a very celebratory one. At breakfast, I looked over the Great Hall to see sparks of light everywhere—the glint of jewelry. I guess people were nervous about the future—I won't lie, it felt really good to be one of those people. But that doesn't mean I was going around, giving out fancy earrings or anything. If those even  _were_ earrings. Could one of the tiniest glints have been a ring?

Seventeen and eighteen felt way too young to be planning out futures. At seventeen I was trying to win the school Quidditch Cup, at twenty-one in the middle of this uncertain year the other me was focused on holding down his starting job, and "at" twenty-four now I was...well, okay, glancing over the Great Hall and being confused. But still. Were they that desperate?

Not my thing to worry about. My thing to worry about was Hufflepuff-Gryffindor that day. I expected less tensions than Ravenclaw-Slytherin. At least from the players' side.

I was right.

A pretty empty stadium—maybe everyone was at Hogsmeade, snogging? Few of the players seemed very enthused as they mounted their brooms. Smith and Weasley shook hands with distaste scrawled across their faces, but after that, things were very, very calm.

Particularly as far as the Keepers were concerned.

McTavish, who had made the save of the season in the opening match, was floundering. Within ten minutes Weasley had scored two and Robins one. The Beaters, to be fair, weren't having a great time of it either—they could usually catch up to the Bludgers in time to send them towards someone else, but not actually get around to hitting the things, so the Bludgers spent most of the time attacking them instead of the other way around.

Burke was commentating, almost as laconically as he had been in the previous match—although he did point out when it was "Hawkshead Attacking Formation for Gryffindor. McTavish...isn't going to get there, Chambers is clear, still Chambers. A goal for Simon Chambers gives Gryffindor the lead, forty-zero."

He was a little more terse when Hufflepuff got on the board. "Pepper...Hanson...Smith. Hanson. A Bludger from Peakes. Hanson still. Rather horrendous Beating there. Could be worse though. Hanson shoots. Glen can't come up with it, and Hufflepuff score. Forty-ten Gryffindor still."

Gryffindor scored two more to make it sixty-ten, but then Smith intercepted a Weasley pass (she grimaced, but that was about as much emotion as showed on her face all game) to double Hufflepuff's score.

While I tried to make sure Marianne Peterson and Briony Stebbins didn't give themselves concussions, Burke kept us up-to-date on the Seekers, who so far hadn't been doing anything of action either. "Quirke accelerating towards those Hufflepuff Chasers. Hanson moving sideways, Quirke...pulls out of the dive. But—look at McDonald!" I couldn't help myself. I looked at McDonald. She was zooming towards where Smith had been a moment before, an intent look on her face, and did not take her eyes off a single spot. Then, her eyes shot off to the right, but still focused just as intensely. She didn't break the gaze until her shoulders had slackened a tad, her mouth twitched. Then, she slowly turned to her left and drifted to the other side of the field.

"And that was a...an unsuccessful dive from McDonald of Gryffindor," said Burke, fighting through a loss for words for the first time. "Anyway, Gryffindor still in possession, Weasley over to Robins, Robins will take it herself, and she scores! Seventy-twenty Gryffindor."

Not a Wronski Feint. She'd been going where Quirke had been, Quirke had seen something first, and then lost track of it. McDonald had seen something, kept looking at it, and then pulled away. Had she really let the Snitch go? That was something you did in the last game of the season when you needed to make up a huge goal differential gap, but this was only the fourth game.

Although...Ravenclaw had won their first two games by a combined margin of almost three hundred, and Gryffindor had them last. If they were really challenging for the Cup, it might make sense to play tactically even then. If she was convinced they could beat Hufflepuff, who were a pretty weak side...

Not my problem. Gryffindor scored two more goals, but before they could break a hundred, Glen drew a penalty for Flacking and Pepper scored. Glen was too flustered to recover for some time, and by the time he really got back into it, it was ninety-sixty. He then made a couple of punch saves, eventually giving Weasley the Quaffle back.

"Trying the Porskoff Ploy, again. Robins isn't there, Pepper will—nope, Pepper won't catch it as he whirls to dodge a Bludger from...okay, it was actually for Pepper,  _meant_  for Robins I think, but now she's in possession and McTavish—doesn't see her coming, she shoots, and Gryffindor lead a hundred-sixty."

The crowd was if anything thinner—I couldn't understand people who left in the middle of Quidditch games, but maybe they had dates or something to go on. It was not a pleasant one for a Keeper to watch—although maybe we could have picked up some ideas about what not to do. Idea 1: Don't ignore the captains. Sometimes they're just chosen for their leadership ability (or, at Hogwarts, seniority), but Weasley and Smith could really play. Idea 2: Don't assume, even if the captains are Chasers and good ones at that, that they will score all the goals. McTavish caught on (albeit by the time Gryffindor had scored five more) that Weasley was the real threat, so he started tailing her, but she set up her teammates so that even they could barely miss. And miss they rarely did.

Even Burke picked up on it. "Another brilliant pass from Weasley, she's really setting up her teammates well." Soon after that, Smith began trying to do the same thing. His passes weren't very good, although Hanson was doing well at catching a lot of them anyway. By then, though, Burke was less insightful, or at the very least less verbally so. "A pass from Smith. Attempted. Caught instead by Chambers. Still Chambers. McTavish flailing, and a goal. Gryffindor now leading 180 to 110."

McTavish and Glen both drew Cobbing penalties within ten minutes of each other, and neither saved the penalties, so the score was 200 to 120 at those minutes' end (Weasley had found time to sneak in another goal). McDonald, for her part, was drifting over the edge of the field, at first just roving, but then with a sudden deliberateness, keeping a constant speed and rigid shoulders. I felt like I was the only one who noticed—Burke and everyone else were watching Pepper score. Maybe Peterson saw McDonald, as she tried to hit a Bludger at her but barely nicked the edge of it. McDonald shook it off, still focused on whatever she was seeing...but then turned and headed for the middle of the field.

Time-wasting is not specifically mentioned in the rules of Quidditch. Most people wouldn't understand why it needs to be at all, given that Quidditch is not a timed sport. However, foul 256 on the list is "Silencing an opponent or referee." And when it was committed in the first World Cup final, it was done against the Flemish captain, in order to prevent him from extending the first potentially long timeout to two hours. So, in that sense, interfering with the normal flow of things was frowned upon. What was McDonald doing? And what about Burke?

"Weasley. To Chambers. Back to Weasley. Still Weasley, and she scores. Gryffindor 210, Hufflepuff 120."

By then the Keepers were really flagging. The Chasers at least could split their workload in thirds, and aside from whatever McDonald was playing at, nobody else had really contributed at all. The Chasers took advantage, racking up goal after goal; Hanson, then Pepper scored in quick succession to "close" the gap to seventy. Weasley and Robins responded in kind, almost picking up pace as they saw how little they had to do.

"Both sides have now scored more goals than any other team in games so far this season," Burke pointed out. So he did contribute some trivia, even when it was just that. "Chambers. Weasley. Robins. Chambers again. Still Chambers, and another goal, 240 for Gryffindor to 140 for Hufflepuff."

Even I was feeling a little tired, although I hadn't had much to do considering how long the game had gone on. There had been fouls, yes, but for sloppy rather than dirty play.

"Hufflepuff are passing the Quaffle." No. Really? Not the Snitch? "Pepper...to Hanson...Hanson will take it...and score. A hundred and fifty points for Hufflepuff. And they still trail by ninety."

And then, after futilely tracking down Bludgers all day, Briony Stebbins finally got ahold of one. She aimed it towards McDonald, who had been drifting slowly, and should have been an easy target. Instead, she dropped out of the air, nonchalantly rolling over on her broom as she did so, and...kept descending, landing calmly on the pitch and walking away.

"Hold on," said Burke, confused, "McDonald—is that? She's got the Snitch!" Indeed, she was holding it up with her left hand by then, to the other thirteen players who didn't seem to realize that the game was over. Hastily, I blew my whistle. "Gryffindor win, 390 to 150. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone."

Never let it be said that Slytherins are heartless.


	28. Just In Time

Friday night, February 20, was my next "rotational" shift. I almost forgot until a minute or two before—I'd been reading the  _Daily Prophet's_  preview of the Quidditch season. Sure, I remembered Tutshill winning, but who was to say what might change?

_Puddlemere United—won't break out of their mid-table stasis this year or the next, but too much talent to finish last. Seeker Chelsea Jenkins has been made captain for this season and looks set to stay a fan favorite._

Not a bad prediction, considering. I couldn't bring myself to read the lowdown on Tutshill, but looked up just in time to see the clock and hurry out to check the castle.

I liked to start in the dungeons and wander up, finishing up by checking in on Gryffindor's Fat Lady for old times' sake. And so I went, passing the entrances to the Slytherin and Hufflepuff common rooms—everything was quiet. Through the Great Hall, ceiling dark to match the sky. I had my own wand on an everyday (everynight, rather)  _Lumos_  as I walked past the hourglasses. Everyone still above zero, Slytherin with a decent lead over Ravenclaw.

Classrooms and hallways. The trophy room was dark, though the door had been left open. The library was closed, but I walked through just in case. Nobody.

Up and up, and up again to the good old seventh floor. I was just about to check in on the Fat Lady when I heard voices from nearby. As quietly as I could, I followed. Two boys, it sounded like. Older students, one's head peering slightly out a door.

"...dumb idea. Carrows don't...pure blood."

"Sure, but...Lovegood. We'd...ringleaders show up first. Teach 'em a..."

"...practice yet. You can't control..."

"Yeah, but you can."

"...Gryffindor Tower, we can't blow..."

"...should stay in..."

"...least a dozen..."

"...show up one by one, then we'll pick..."

"Or just the first..."

"...see who's first..."

"What's going on in there?" I yelled.

"We're having a pee!" one called.

"Two pees," another volunteered.

"Oh, shut your mug."

I tried to glance in—yep, a bathroom, with urinals on the far walls. Funny, I thought I'd seen a bookshelf, but there was very little light.

"Don't wait up for us," one called, "just realized there's something else I've gotta have."

"You mean take."

"I mean take. Right. This, er, could be a while."

I leaned against a tapestry on the opposite wall as one of them swung the door shut. Two boys—older, but not any of the ones I'd seen when on hall duty before. And they were going to pick people who showed up? The corridors were empty. Or teach them a...a lesson? A dumb idea, that they couldn't control...

Why would anybody be  _waiting_ on people to show up in a bathroom? In my school days, there certainly hadn't been any "ringleaders" of toilet posses.

Something didn't add up.

I waited. And waited. No sign of them leaving.

Did I want to walk in? If they were expecting students, it might be good to see what they had in store. On the other hand, if whatever it was was out of control...

Before I could worry too much more, that boy strode up. The one Weasley and Luna had been hanging around with, his face broken with scars. He was a seventh year, I was pretty sure. "Evening, Professor," he smiled. "Just need to, er, take a leak."

Had dinner been that satiating? "You're in Dumbledore's Army."

"Professor," he said, "give a man some privacy."

"I don't think you should go in there."

"What are you doing?" I saw him clench his wand.

"I heard people talking—voices—"

"I'll help you out, it's seventy-five points I'm up to now for Gryffindor. Just dock them and be done with it."

"It's not safe, in there."

He looked me up and down. Nervously, I started thinking—if he was in contact with the resistance, he might have heard that someone was impersonating Oliver Wood. I backed up, standing directly in front of the door, one arm sprawled behind me.

"I can deal," he said, "with whatever's in a bathroom."

"I really don't think—"

"Neville!" called Weasley, approaching. Things did not feel safe at all. "Professor?"

"I heard voices, coming from inside the room."

"What's going on?" someone muttered from inside the room. "It's those Gryffindors." One hand in front of, one hand behind me, I traced the outlines of squares in the air. "Are we doing this or not, don't just—"

" _Adhaereo_!" I thundered, and the Gryffindors vanished from sight.

One of the boys exited, glancing to his left and right. Nervously, I stepped closer to the door. "Who was that?"

"A couple idiots out of bed after hours, I've docked them points and sent them back to their dorms. Speaking of which, is your friend quite done?"

"Er, he thinks he's almost found a way to magic it out, Mr. Wood. But I've found a shortcut passage down to the dungeons so if we're lucky, we'll be taking that in a minute or two."

"You  _will_  exit through this door," I said, "or lose more points. Secret passages are not to be used after hours. Or before them, for that matter."

With a wordless shrug, he closed the door, and I sat back against the tapestry.

Just like I'd told Snape in the interview, I was quite good at Sticking Charms. Most people settled for performing them on tangible objects, but I was pretty sure I had just glued the space between the ceiling and the floor on one side of the tapestry, to the corresponding rectangle on the opposite side. Of course, they couldn't actually move. So people on the outside would just step from one to the next, without any way to perceive the door, the tapestry, or me in between. I, however, could not get out unless I released the charm.

Whatever the idiots in the bathroom were planning, the Dumbledore's Army kids were safe. Probably very confused, but safe. And as soon as the two lugs left the room, I could take the charm down and go to bed. That was all I needed.


	29. A Long Dark Nighttime

At least one of two things, I decided, was happening. Firstly, that wasn't really a bathroom. And/or secondly, they had taken a secret passage out.

If they were gone, I could open it, make sure it was empty, and leave.

If they weren't...they had been planning something, it sounded like, for people who  _entered_. I was a professor, of course. But if they couldn't control it...

I could leave. But I had no idea how many people had shown up, or, more importantly, how many people would walk in if I took the charm down. Everything I thought of just scared me more, pinning me to the ground.

Cautiously, not really expecting it to work, I raised my wand and whispered " _Accio Daily Prophet_." No luck. I didn't think I could do anything outside this little bubble. Otherwise, magic still worked; I levitated my shirt to make sure I still could, but then put it back on because I was cold.

I started daydreaming up broom games for flight club. Something using the Quaffles, I decided, but maybe not the goalposts. They could...pass to each other. By bouncing the ball. Off third people's heads? Probably unsafe. Off the ground? They'd have to fly too low to make it interesting. Off...okay, maybe not bouncing.

They could...cheap balls, not real Quaffles,  _stick_  them on top of the towers and time how long it took each other to round them all up.

Okay. Great. I had my idea. Then what?

I could...knock on the door. Say I needed to use the bathroom.

I decided to name all the League Cup winners I remembered. Starting, I grinned to myself, in 1997.

 _1997, Kenmare. 1996, Ballycastle. 1995, Tutshill. 1994,_  sigh, _Appleby. 1993, Tutshill. 1992, Kenmare. 1991, Puddlemere! 1990, Holyhead. 1989, Holy_ —no, it was the same team in '88 and '89, not '89 and '90. But Appleby or Wimbourne? One of those two.  _1987, Port..._ no, not them either.

We could always play the reverse game. Not that I, or anyone I knew, knew the whole list, but everyone knew the beginning:  _1674, Montrose. 1675, Caerphilly. 1676, Caerphilly. 1677, Ballycastle..._

There was a lot of parity in the league. It was 1998 then, the league founded in 1674, which meant...three hundred twenty-four years? Ballycastle had won the league twenty-seven times, which was second-best overall. If everyone was as good as them...twenty-seven times thirteen. I could do that, and it certainly wasn't like I had anything better to do. Twenty...twenty by thirteen is two hundred sixty, seven by thirteen is ninety-one. That made...three-hundred and fifty-one seasons needed for everyone to be as good as Ballycastle, not far from the real total. And Montrose were even better! Granted, everyone else wasn't, but that was still exceptional parity. I thought. I couldn't compare to the other leagues off the top of my head. Weren't there one Uganda team that were dominant?

But then again, this was the island Quidditch had been born on, only made sense for it to have so many strong teams. Didn't it? It had seen—and  _would_  see (or not, or not)—a lot, at least this century. Dumbledore, extolled as the greatest wizard of all time—and Voldemort, perhaps the most terrible.

That was too much exceptionalism for me. Better to get slightly more cosmopolitan, by which is meant, try and remember all the European Cup winners.

 _1995, Vratsa Vultures. 1992, Garadok Gargoyles._ Vultures were rather more airborne creatures than Gargoyles, weren't they?  _1989..._

I wanted to sleep. I conjured up a pillow, but that was dumb, if I wanted to sleep I could have gone back to my bed. But I did want to sleep. But I didn't.

If I had any way of knowing what time it was, maybe I would have felt more comfortable bothering...not Snape, McGonagall or somebody about it. But for all I knew they were still  _there_ , or trying to be. The children. What time was it?

 _It doesn't matter_ , I told myself.  _You can stay up, you don't have anything to do tomorrow. Or is it today already? You don't have anything to do, you can stay, it doesn't matter._

_You don't matter._

_Has this already played out? Was I already here? No. No. This is me trying. This is me trying to make a difference. But how can I know? How can anybody ever know?_

I'm telling this wrong, I think; if I'm making it sound like it was slow, thought drifting into emptiness past thought, I'm failing. These thoughts followed one upon another like so many raindrops on the same little place, then maybe I'd calm down for a while, then there'd be another splutter.

_I'm tired. I'm so tired. What if they came out now? What good would I be? No, I'm not going to fight anyone. Then what are you doing here? Maintaining the spell. But why? In case. In case the kids are still going to come and get hurt. But they probably won't because it's so late. But I don't know. But you're tired. But maybe I'm just weak. I'm probably too weak._

Okay. Okay. The fouls! BlaggingCobbingQuaffle-, no, not  _Blurting_ , no, yes, that actually was a foul too. Setting an opponent's broom on fire. Attacking an opponent with an axe. Transfiguring a Beater's bat into a spiked object. Shrinking the goalposts. Why didn't they just extend the rule on wand use to include equipment besides the balls?

Seven hundred. I could count that high on my hands, if I wanted to, I knew the up-and-down trick. Flacking, Stooging, Blatching, Haversacking. "Obvious and deliberate injury not otherwise specified." Literally blinding the referee. Never had had to call that one, luckily—who could you charge with it? Greasing opponent's hands. Greasing opponent's broomstick. Triggering the spontaneous release of dust previously gathered up by your own broom. Effacing boundaries of pitch. Deliberately hitting anyone with a Beater's bat. Vanishing opponent's robes. Transfiguring opponent (or referee) into inanimate object or object "sufficiently inanimate as to preclude effective participation" (i.e. polecats were out; trolls were conceivably in, but they'd make pretty good Beaters so there was no point to it anyway).

Hollowing out Bludgers. Vanishing Snitch wings. Silencing spectators. Amplifying the volume of (presumably supportive) spectators, "or any noisemaking device on their persons" (i.e. the lion hat). This was enough to give me a second wind. Even if I was yawning, a lot—I got some nice big ones, you know the kind, and with nobody to watch I might as well—I at least stayed more or less awake when there were still more to come up with.

"Releasing animals in such a way as causes distraction to play" (most famously the Transylvanian vampire bats, although in this day and age it was  _slightly_ more common to be something like sending spiders down your opponent's robes). Applying gravity-defying charms to any ball, broomstick, or individual, flying or not. Punching an opponent in the face—failed Transylvanian Tackle. They got a lot named after them. Maybe Britain wasn't so unique after all.

Summoning balls—as far as the integrity of the game went that had to be about number one. Summoning any object from another individual's person. Tampering with any equipment indicating the progress of the game.

I needed a third wind.

Now that I'd actually seen the list, some of the suggestions I'd read about in "Which Broomstick" didn't seem as outlandish as they had the first time around. There was always a column where you could write in—someone had suggested "willfully and blatantly refusing provisions in a manner that endangers the physical, mental or emotional health of players, the referee, or spectators," referencing the exploits of Cameron "the Unkempt" Schrieber, a Keeper known for not showering during marathon matches because it "felt gross and threw me off."

You had to admire the guy. Well, at least I did. Even if the writer to the editor called him one of a "mad breed." (We Keepers get that a lot.) Call us what you'd like, there's something to be said for the tense thrill of saving a Quaffle.

 _Or were they not talking about positions? What if it were teams? Maybe being part of Puddlemere United is a "mad breed." Or is it something even less than that? They were the ones who signed me, but what if it had been someone else? I'd have been just as eager to succeed, just as proud of that team, as I was of Puddlemere. And there I was, trying to say I was really free to make a difference? Like my choices mattered! Here I was, a_ time-traveller,  _and I had nothing better to do with my time than lean half-asleep against this dumb tapestry and brood!_

 _No. Calm. Calm, Oliver_. I was always calmer when I called myself Oliver.  _List...something. Something else._

_1994, Bulgaria. How many times has a losing side caught the Snitch in a final? Nine, not counting the draw in 1861. Bulgaria, Poland, the Papal States ("World Cup" hardly does it justice, there haven't been that many non-European teams)..._

Into the night, into the night, the attacks of thoughts alternating with blissful silence inside as well as outside my head, and those in turn alternating with lists. I ended the affair highly, highly impressed with anyone who could actually memorize all seven hundred plus fouls.

Of course, if I'd actually been  _trying_  to memorize them I'm sure I would have done much better.

And then, suddenly, noise.

I stood up, rubbing a tweak in my neck. I could have imagined it. Right? Maybe I was completely losing it, and my mind just saw a movement in the door without it being there.

No. No, mercifully, it really was morning. Hurriedly, I took down the charm and leaned against the tapestry, hoping that I wouldn't give away how utterly exhausted I was.

And the boys came out the door, neither looking tired at all.

"Hullo."

"They're onto you," I said with completely false confidence, "they knew it was a trap, and they're not coming back." Had to sound authoritative. Anything to get them to clear out and not return.

"Glad someone's looking out for us," the second said. "Didn't think you had it in you."

No comment. My eyelids felt like Ironbellies.

"Let's get breakfast," he said, waving his friend along. Funny, I thought I recognized them as I headed the other direction, but I had absolutely zero inclination to wonder who they were or do anything else except throw myself into bed. I slept a long, deep sleep, the good kind where you're not interrupted at all and so you don't remember your dreams. Except I think one of them had gargoyles in it or something.


	30. Time Marches On

February is the shortest month, and after that it zipped past considering how little I have to do. Yeah, I should have probably made the most of every moment given how I'd gotten then, but I'd had more than my fair share of moments I didn't know what to do with that night.

I grew a little worried about Damian Podmore. His other teachers, bar the Carrows, told me he'd been doing well in class, but whenever I wrote him owls asking when he'd like to practice flying again he never wrote back. I saw him in the Great Hall sometimes, hidden behind a mass of larger Ravenclaws, but could never quite corner him. Well, maybe I could have. But, I figured, we had time.

Bright was a little more willing. Not entirely able, granted, but willing. Her confidence never dimmed, and she was able to get "Up!" enthusiastically, but bucked around early on and couldn't control her flight direction. I had her fly short distances towards fixed, visible targets and she seemed to get it once in a while, but send her even a full length of the pitch and she'd veer off course. I had her try different brooms, even my broken one when all else failed—maybe two wrongs would make a right—but to no avail.

Again I wondered why they'd hired me. Not just in the sense of "there's no way I'm earning room and board," but in the sense of "am I a rubbish teacher." Surely they wouldn't hire an actual professor without seeing how they taught, would they? But where would they test them out?

It was a rush job, I told myself, things were in tumult brought on by Madam Hooch...resigning. Or had she really resigned? I couldn't remember if she was Muggle-born, it had never mattered. Maybe there was something I could do for her.

No need to tell much truth this time around.

_Dear Madam Hooch,_

_You probably don't know me but I've heard a lot about you. I'm the new flying instructor at Hogwarts, and I'm just hoping I can do as good a job as you did—the Quidditch players are a strong bunch, I'm sure you've taught them well_.

In all honesty, they weren't. With so many Muggle-borns not allowed at school, teams were drawing heavily on reserves, and if my memories were still valid the next few years' graduates wouldn't help the league much. But she didn't need to know that.

_I'm still having trouble with a few students who just can't get it together. I hear this is a normal occurrence and we still have time but any advice you could pass along would be brilliant. Not that I want to disturb your retirement too much, of course!_

_Best wishes,_

_Fergus Wood_

I mailed that off confidently, but the next day, found it back on my bed.  _Ms. Hooch is not currently receiving mail,_ the envelope said, with the Hogwarts crest stamped on it. The envelope had been ripped open.

Probably wasn't a good sign.

March came, and with it, a new idea. Yet another owl sent to the breakfast table. That time, at least, it was not to Podmore, who scuffled off to class every day more furtively than the next. He'd been regressing, curse it, I knew he could fly at least a little before the tests. No, that owl landed on the Hufflepuff table.

I couldn't see its recipient's reaction, but the next day I got a reply.  _Ok, maybe on the weekend? I'm worried about exams._

I told her it would be fine, and sure enough, that Saturday afternoon both Tiffany and Abby showed up at the Quidditch pitch.

"Good to see you," I smiled to them both. "Thanks for coming out here, Tiffany."

"It was fine," she said. "Well, we'll see. Right, Abby?"

Abby muttered something that sounded like "don't tell Mum and Dad about this."

"Okay. Tiffany, I've, er, seen you fly with Graham before." I wished I could say something more inspiring about her ability, but there was really nothing inspiring to say. "Just see if you and Abby can try and settle into a nice pace together. Not too fast."

"Huh?" said both girls.

"Just...start talking, or something, and then fly a little."

"Won't that be distracting?" asked Abby.

"It might. Fly low to the ground, just in case. But it might help you not adjust and readjust so much. Just try it—start talking, then you get on your broom, Tiffany, and then Abby, you."

They looked at me awkwardly. I took a couple steps away. Abby bent down and whispered something to Tiffany, who laughed, and they kept talking in low voices. Tiffany finally got on her broom, and took off slowly, making a wide circle and drifting up and down. She stayed aloft, though, and Abby followed her into the air. With a less loud "up" than usual—maybe I was just standing too far away, but maybe she'd calmed down. Good.

They flew low to the ground, half a length of the pitch, two-thirds, but then Abby, who'd turned to look her sister in the eye, turned and swiveled downwards. I nervously rushed over—on foot, stupid of me, hadn't brought a broom of my own—but she managed to right herself enough for her feet to touch down a split-second before the rest of her.

"Abby!" Tiffany squealed. "Are you okay?"

She grunted, but stood up. "Well, that didn't work. Can I go in, now? I'm fine," she added before I could speak, "but Tiffany really needs to study."

"Sure, go ahead," I said. I remembered how stressful exam time could get. "I'm sorry if I'm making things complicated. Tiffany, maybe you and Abby could practice on your own sometime when it's just you two? That might make things less stressful."

"Oh, Abby will be fine," said Tiffany as she walked away. "Whether she learns how to fly or not. But for  _your_  sake, maybe I'll give it a try."


	31. No Time For Losers

I fumed about that as I was walking back inside. What had Tiffany meant? She was right, in that Abby could pass to the next year without learning to fly, but did she mean it was a bad thing for me to be concerned about my students learning the curriculum? How dare she! That was my responsibility, the only way I could see whether I was at least doing something right.

The good news was it was opening day, and Puddlemere were likely to win. I went to an unused classroom that usually stored, among other things, the wireless, but couldn't find it there. Annoyed, I let out a loud " _Accio wireless!_ "

"Oy! You there!" I flinched, as Alecto Carrow poked her head in the room. "The wireless is in the staff room, you fool."

"Is it? Brilliant," I said, making my way up there without a backward glance. Once I got there, however, I found Professor Flitwick sitting next to it with his eyes closed, swaying his head in time to a sonata. I didn't have the heart to interrupt him, so I left and decided to get tickets to Puddlemere's game the next week. They'd be cheaper, anyway.

The next night was my next patrolling night. Just to be safe, I brought the list of fouls tucked under my robes, and started at the top of the school, checking the tapestry (the door had vanished, but that's Hogwarts for you) first, just to be safe. No one was there.

For a change, the Fat Lady was still awake when I got past Gryffindor. "Oh, hello, Oliver," she yawned.

"Fergus," I whispered. "Go to bed."

"Oh, is it? I can't keep track of all the students. They come and go, you know."

I decided not to push the issue. "Yeah."

Down and down stairs, which embarrassingly resulted in me going from the fifth to third floor and then back to the fourth before I really realized I was lost—I'd gotten very used to the downstairs route and slipped into it without realizing it. I finally got through, though, without incident.

Some weather charm had gone haywire so the staffroom was intolerably humid Monday at staff meeting. No one wanted to stay a minute longer than they had to, including me, but I nevertheless did have some business to bring up. "Why do we have the wireless here? Is it really going to enrich our staff meetings to listen to Celestina Warbeck?"

The humor didn't seem to go over well. There was a pause, which confused me because I figured everyone would be anxious to get business taken care of and leave, but Amycus eventually answered, "There have been problems when it has been made available to the students."

They'd lost me. The wirelesses were just broadcasting Ministry-approved content, after all, and short of checking the Quidditch results for illegal gambling rings I didn't see what trouble a wireless could cause. And, let's face it, the only one who could really exploit gambling on Quidditch was  _me_.

I was done betting, though—just wanted to watch Puddlemere versus Wimbourne. Although I was trying to change the future, I didn't see how anything I was doing at Hogwarts would affect the outcome of that match. When I got to Dartmoor and saw a crowd of people in what I took from a distance to be wasp yellow, I decided to slip into that crowd rather than hang out with the Puddlemere supporters—they might recognize me.

The fans were in a good mood. Even before the game started, I could hear them chanting. "When they see us gunning for them they'll start running, and when they cannot run, they'll all take to the air. That's where we'll defeat 'em, watch us and we'll beat 'em, we'll send them on a spin till they fall out of there."

"Gunning?" I wasn't going to pushed the issue. It rhymed. Which was brilliant for Wimbourne fans, whose repertoire was not traditionally known to extend beyond variations on a theme of "Bzzzzzzz."

I blinked.

Oh.

They weren't Wimbourne fans.

I'd come to the wrong stadium. This was Tutshill versus  _Chudley_.

That explained a lot.

The game began, and I was left dizzy trying to keep track of all the different players. There was a Beater about to knock his own skull in if not someone else's, a Seeker flying too close to the Chasers, who were playing horrendously sloppily, another Beater failing to take advantage of—but I only had two eyes.

My ears, and the combination of distant chants and nearby curses, told me that Tutshill had quickly taken the lead—by twenty? thirty? forty? When they were managing to aim in the right direction, the Cannon Beaters were aiming almost exclusively for Sophia Casper, the Seeker. Which proved one of two things—either they'd read  _The Beaters' Bible_ , or they thought that if they could just hold her off the pace, they'd somehow have time to catch up. In fact, by distracting her, they just prolonged the game and allowed the Tornados to rack up a better goal differential.

Fifty-ten, sixty-ten. The Tornadoes drew a stupid penalty, and we watched the Cannons take the penalty—it was the first time all game I'd really focused on the Tutshill Keeper (his Chudley counterpart had had far too many opportunities to be scrutinized). As Chudley scored to make it sixty-twenty, I realized I'd been watching the game more as a referee than a Keeper. And that scared me.

When could I go home? I'd been flying every day, pretty much, to keep in form, but that was no substitute for real practice with other players at my level.

The Tornados kept rolling; seventy, eighty-twenty, then eighty-thirty. The Cannons fans were at once surly but placid about the result—they'd had a century to cause trouble about not doing well, by then they were used to it and just cussed preemptively. I, for my part, was growing irritated. The game shouldn't have been so predictable. And yet it was. The Tornadoes were—could be—champions; the Cannons were the Cannons. You didn't have to be a time-traveller to know that the Tornadoes were going to be leading by fifty.

They put away an easy penalty. Sixty.

But what if it had been the other way around, I asked myself? It could still yet be the other way—one lucky grab and it would be the Cannons who walked away as winners. Would people be dumbfounded? No, they'd accept it as a natural thing—"oh, blah blah blah, you tell me a story about the champions versus the Cannons. Of course the Cannons will win."

Granted, given that I'd come to see two entirely different teams, I supposed I didn't have the right to complain about predictable results.

Maybe they could've tied. It's happened. Not a lot, not ever in my career, but maybe they  _could've_. That'd have been interesting.

Instead, Casper swerved into a dive and everybody stood up to watch, because against the Cannons, you usually don't need to Wronski Feint. She whirled, and came up with the Snitch.

I made my way through the orange crowd, and if anybody recognized me they didn't say anything. The other fans were in surprisingly talkative, and pleasant, moods considering. Other, more violent teams would be bragging about how they'd at least caused a couple Chasers to fall, but they were just shrugging and speculating about how badly they'd lose the next game.

"I mean," one man gesticulated, "it isn't really fair, you know? We had three starters hauled away and another on strike, if it hadn't been for the Muggle-born commission—"

"—Tutshill's Chaser combination wouldn't have been broken up, and they'd have scored even more," someone else said, friendlily.

He took it in stride. "Ah well. We can dream."


	32. Miracle of Time

If I hadn't been able to tell students' ages by looking at their sizes in the Great Hall, I could by the middle of March. The fifth and seventh years were the nervous-looking ones—more nervous than usual, that is, everyone seemed more uptight than when I'd gone to school—and everyone else was antsier by the hour.

"What's going on?" I finally asked McGonagall. "Someone spill Pepper-Up Potion into the breakfast juice?"

"Holiday excitement, I think," she said. "Speaking of which, are you staying over again?"

"For the Easter holidays? Yes, of course." She kept thinking I had friends or something. Would need to make up some alibi about the absentee Amateurs. "But they're not for another few weeks."

"They begin after this week."

"What?" I would have dropped my silverware if I'd had any. "But...Easter's not till the middle of April?"

"It isn't." She continued walking.

"But that's silly, it's  _Easter_! Who has any reason to reschedule the holidays?"

"Maybe people were used to having the holidays begin in March after last year. Maybe lots of professors wanted to give exams now and pick up with new material afterwards. Maybe the administration thought that too much discussion of those who die for many and live again could be viewed as seditious in the present political climate, Fergus, find something important to worry about or keep your mouth shut!"

I threw my hands up and walked away. When even McGonagall was shouting at me, things were really going poorly.

I tried to corner Podmore and Bright, but couldn't reach either of them, and Tiffany told me flat-out during the last flight club meeting before the end of term that there was no way they would be practicing over break—neither owned their own broom, nor were in any hurry to get one. I'd had the kids doing relay races and leaving long magical trails in the air. Seemed to work all right—they wanted to go fast, and burn energy, and I was more than happy to let them. Only two fell off, and they took it in stride. Some of the kids shrugged off more bruises than Quidditch stars picked up.

To my, but not his, pleasant surprise, Podmore was there over the holiday as well, and there weren't enough Ravenclaws to hide him. I tracked him down after lunch one day.

"Go 'way," he sulked, knowing immediately what I was about to suggest. "'m not gonna fly. It doesn't matter."

"Podmore—"

"It's just one class. And a dangerous one. No one makes me take Care of Magical Creatures, do they? I'm fine."

"Podmore, you know how to fly."

"No. Not good enough."

"You are good enough. I know you are. I've seen you do it."

"Then sign my paperwork for me, what does it matter?"

"Because it's the right thing to do."

"No, flying on a stupid broom doesn't count as any right thing. Leave me alone." And with that, he tore off.

Why did it always happen to me? Because I didn't teach a real class, I figured.

Because Professor Vector had left for the holiday, my patrol shift was pushed up to Monday night instead of Tuesday. I brought a copy of  _Which Broomstick?_ , that time, but again nothing was going on on the seventh floor or anywhere else.

I couldn't send a card for my parents' anniversary, just like I couldn't send one for their birthdays. Although, to be fair, they hadn't celebrated mine. Granted, Oliver had turned twenty-one a few days before the Appleby debacle, but I didn't feel like that was the sort of thing one needed to celebrate twice. And no one had been there for Fergus' birthday.

So I kept trying to read up about how to go back, or go fast, spending a lot of time in the library over break. This amused some of the older students who were also there, cramming for their exams. "What's your final in, then?" grinned one, looking over my shoulder at a copy of  _Soaring Among Short-Snouts_. "Broom racing?"

"More or less," I muttered, flipping to the appendix to get a list of the speed records. Fast, but all speeds that had been set before, and I hadn't remembered anyone complaining about time travel in Sweden.

Brady Curtis had  _done_  it. Eighty years ago. And there'd been no further progress? Nothing? The Muggles at least actually innovated things.

"Good luck," the student grinned, before burrowing into the stacks.

Unfortunately, Podmore as a first year was not the type to hole up in the library, and he was able to avoid me the entire week. Except at meals, but even then he was able to slip out of the Great Hall before I could catch up with him.

It maybe should have been a worrying thought, that students could just sneak away without me being able to catch up to them. But hey, it was his loss if he didn't pass the test. Not mine.

Right?

I was feeling a little guilty about not having anything to do—it was worse over break—but I told myself that it  _was_  a break, and I'd be kept busy once the Quidditch season picked up in May. If I hadn't gone home by then. One day I just spent Apparating all over, from Hogsmeade to Diagon Alley and back again, to see if that did anything. As long as I could, granted—I was getting some pretty bad headaches by the time I was fifteen minutes in (measured by the Gringotts clock), and funnier looks even before then, so I holed up in Flourish and Blotts for a while. Back, forth, rest, check time, note that it felt like the right one, sigh, back, forth, until curfew drew closer and I started walking back to the school. It was a cool night, and I briskly passed the Quidditch pitch, the castle standing in front of me.

And then, I heard the explosions.


	33. Wirelesslessness

There were spells being fired off everywhere. Well, not everywhere, they were all on the left side of the path. I stopped, not wanting to get any closer but not really wanting to go away.

Then, something with very large footsteps started walking out of the forest.

I held my ground for one second, staring—hey, I  _had_  been a Gryffindor—to double-check that it was shaped kind of like a human. Proportionally, anyway. A really large kind of human.

At that point, I bolted. Let me tell you, if just running in panic was enough to speed up time for you, I'd have been back in 2000 before you could say Jack Fwooperson.

I wasn't.

Instead, I slammed the doors behind me, catching my breath. "Evening," croaked Filch.

Anyone else, I might have said something, but he was just a Squib—what good could he do? "Evening," I sighed.

He didn't spare me a backwards glance as I slowly walked upstairs, half-hoping to find a window that would let me see what was going on. But when I didn't find one, I wasn't too disappointed. Instead, I just went up to bed.

The next morning, I noticed that Hagrid the gamekeeper was missing from the breakfast table. He's kind of a...conspicuous fellow. So conspicuous, he's even conspicuously absent when he's absent. Had the explosions come from over by his hut? I knew he had one, but I'd never been there.

But no one was making a big deal of it, and it was still the holiday, so presumably he might have gone on a day trip or something—I'd certainly been on enough of those. I didn't think too hard about it until, two days later, he was still gone.

"Er, Minerva?" I asked. "Do you know where Professor Hagrid is?" Weird, he was more of a legitimate teacher than I was.

"No," she said pointedly. "Nor does anyone on staff, and that's for everyone's own good."

"Is he...alive? Is he okay?"

"To the best of my knowledge, yes."

"But not coming back to teach?"

"Not in the near future."

"Do I ever get to find anything out? Where does everyone get up-to-date on things, are you all using the wireless?"

"The wireless has been stolen," she said calmly. "Good day, Fergus."

All right, well, maybe I could do some good getting it back? I cast " _Accio wireless_ ," again, from the quiet of my room. No avail. I supposed someone else would have tried it already.

Maybe that was the Carrows' definition of student trouble, stealing the wireless. Although if they already had access to it, they wouldn't need to steal it. Or maybe that was what the explosions were about, I wasn't sure. But Hogwarts had to be a big enough place for two wirelesses, didn't it?

I tried the spell again, and nothing came, neither the one I recognized or another one. Apparently not.

How else could I get around? The Hogwarts Express was a fast-moving thing, but everyone took that and none of them time-travelled. I didn't think asking to set up a gigantic Portkey chain to nowhere in particular would be entirely well-received, nor did I know who I'd ask. Flying all the time clearly wasn't fast enough, either.

When term started up again, I finally got some official information about Hagrid's departure. Snape announced to everyone that the professor had been "going on leave for personal reasons," and that Marjorie Hooke, a very tall woman who sat stock-still throughout the entire proceedings, would be substituting. Then, at staff meeting, Snape informed the staff that Hooke would not be living at Hogwarts, so Hagrid was taken off the patrol calendar and everyone else pushed forward—I'd be on duty the following night.

"...fortunate to get someone on such short notice, those students have their tests to take." I heard Madam Pomfrey saying as we drifted away. "Poor Wilhelmina's sick of being hauled in..."

I supposed she was onto something. Arresting so many Muggle-borns at once had thrown the economy into shock back in August, and with the scattered disappearances, things weren't getting any stabler. Although, the students leaving school probably wouldn't have to worry about being underemployed if they didn't want to be.

I brought a copy of the  _Daily Prophet_ with me on duty, and when I got through without incident ( _and_  without getting lost!), decided to read it anyway because I was itching for Quidditch commentary. Dumb idea. There was only transfer gossip to report on, midweek, and even that was scarce. People didn't want to transfer into Britain those days, nor would they even by 2000 if things kept going the way they looked like they would. The advertisements claimed to be for dodgy-looking "Muggle-repelling charms." And the articles in the other sections were equally rubbish, mostly about singers that did not look promising. If as many singers as Quidditch players were Muggle-born, we might have to put up with that sort of rubbish for a long time.

Well. Those of us that had access to wirelesses, anyway.

Attendance was down at flight club—lots of fifth and seventh years were cramming, it seemed, to say nothing of Weasley and other older students. I asked the kids what their favorite game so far had been with unhelpfully mixed results, and it made me look bad because whoever's game I picked I looked like I was favoring. I finally settled on "make interlocking rings and have other people fly through them," given that that had caused the least injuries. No one actually fell, that week. So I was good for something, as a teacher. Or maybe they were just getting better on their own.

I almost asked them to try shooting Quaffles at me, see if I was still in form, but decided that was too risky—I'd look strange if I hadn't atrophied as much as I feared.

Yes, I have been called arrogant at times.


	34. Time Flies

Starting school back up again kept the administration busy. Between sorting out curricula for the new substitute teacher, and chaining up first years in the dungeons (okay, that was just a rumor I'd heard—first years can be imaginative), apparently they were running out of time to read people's mail. Or something else had changed, because the Great Hall was suddenly full of a lot more owls over breakfast. None for me, of course, except the  _Sunday Prophet—_ I'd given up reading it when it didn't have Quidditch scores.

Easter—the actual holiday itself, not the break—went off without any attempts to score political points. I would say it was hitchless, because on my end it was, but apparently not Professor Snape's.

On Saturday afternoon, I trekked off on yet another attempt to track down the wireless (Puddlemere versus Tutshill!). As I approached Classroom Eleven, I heard Snape say from farther off than usual, "This may be an minor incident in itself, but your insubordination is proving dangerous."

Snape hardly ever needed to raise his voice with anyone, so I was curious as to which witch or wizard could annoy him that much. The answer, it turned out, was neither; instead, it was Firenze the centaur speaking with the headmaster. "You designed the schedule."

"I designed it before I knew my Care of Magical Creatures teacher was going to run off," said Snape.

"Ah, yes...your wizards' ability to care for your magical fellow is quite unrivaled, is it not?"

"I will tolerate disrespect towards my curriculum, I will  _not_  tolerate your behavior if this insubordination grows any further out of hand. Or hoof, as the case may be."

"I have hands. And I will take your shift tonight, provided you  _learn_  something from all the moralizing."

I'd stayed there longer than I intended to, not really paying attention to the conversation so much as I was thinking about Firenze. Sure, he was a professor, but he only taught half-time. Which meant that he—and Professor Trelawney—were kind of like me, not really having as much to do as the others. Trelawney rarely ate with us in the Great Hall, but she often came down for holidays. Would Easter be the same?

It would, in fact. Sunday afternoon there was a pretty sizable feast, although not too fancy as the house-elves had to cook for the whole crowd of students. Seriously, there was no reason they couldn't have had the Easter break  _at Easter_. But I didn't mind, since I was able to track down Trelawney afterwards.

"Er, Professor? I had some questions about Divination."

"Ah, Mr. Wood...we live in frightening times. Yet the Inner Eye does not See upon command, I cannot read your future." She looked into my face, as if trying to pick up on an aura or whatever.

"No, no, I don't want any predictions," I rushed to explain. "I just want to learn about the theory of it. Never took a class."

"Really?" she said, lighting up. This was probably more enthusiasm than she got on a normal weekday. "I beg your pardon. Come, come..."

As we climbed the staircases back towards her room, I asked, "When you make a prediction, do you know it'll come true? Or is it only a guess?"

"Ah, "prediction," that is what your Quidditch analysts do. The Inner Eye does not See upon command. With practice and dedication, one might attune oneself to the Signs...but even then, one might misinterpret them."

"So it's not guaranteed to be true?"

"Oh, all knowledge of the future is true. But sometimes we err, or claim to understand, when we do not."

That wasn't incredibly helpful—my memories were my memories, not a load of shapes floating in tea. "Would you say that...knowledge you have, of the future, is somehow travelling back from the past?"

"Travelling? My dear, you have much to learn. Knowledge is not an object that can be grasped or felt, or  _moved_. No, it does not travel."

"All right. Sorry. Do...do you know, is it possible for  _anything_ to travel backward in time? Or forward?"

She sniffed. "Moving through time? Other than the normal process of watching the future unfold before you? That would lead to all sorts of impossibilities."

"Watching the future unfold...do you mean it's like a book? That's already been written?"

"If you cannot transcend the literal meanings of words, I'm afraid you'll have no chance of ignoring the mundane," she sighed, stepping into her room. "Happy Easter, Mr. Wood."

"Happy—" I began, but she'd closed the door behind me. Still, maybe she had an Inner Ear to match that Inner Eye. "Easter, Professor Trelawney!"

She flung the door open again and stared at me. "You are a strange man."

"Er. I suppose."

"I do not mean to busy myself with Seeing your future, but I sense a deep unsteadiness in you. Even your past is cloaked in shadows...At once, you are speedy and dextrous, and you have come to work at a school of learning...you seem to have been born under Mercury. In the summer. And yet you are troubled, almost a desperate child of Venus...you seek love, love that you cannot obtain...perhaps you were really born late in May or September?"

I tried not to gasp—the crackpot was onto something. My real birthday was at the end of August, which meant I was born under Mercury, and I certainly wanted to fly quickly (for more than one reason). And yet, as Fergus, I couldn't feel the love of my real family, and the day I really turned twenty-four had been at the end of September. "Yeah," I said. "Late September is it." Sharing Oliver's birthday could be a little suspicious. That way I  _really_  fit the part, and hey, maybe the next year she'd send me a birthday card. It'd be better than nothing.

Where by "the next year" I really meant "that year." I'd been teaching for more than half a year already.

You know, they say time flies when you're having fun. That's not right at all.  _I_  fly when I'm having fun. When you're doing something that you really rather wouldn't, the time just slips away.


	35. Of Books and Bats

It wasn't that bad, really. Almost everything I actually  _did_ , I liked. I liked flying on my own. I liked reading in the library. I liked refereeing okay, even though there weren't any games in March or April. I liked flight club, mostly. I  _had_  liked giving flying lessons when there was a decently-sized class.

Tracking down Podmore and Bright, on the other hand, was less fun.

Bright actually  _wanted_  to try, and humored me by doing so Tuesday after Easter. She took off in the wrong direction entirely—seriously, how does being eleven (maybe twelve, I wasn't sure) excuse the fact that you don't know which are the right goalposts? After getting herself turned around, she somehow managed to perform even less well, ploughing into the ground at the end of her first trial. No new bruises, thankfully. A few of the older kids at flight club were easier to tell apart by their bruises than their faces. Just a few, though—there were these identical twins that had only come once or twice. I was a teacher, I had to be good at knowing kids by their faces.

Podmore was harder to track down. I sent him a few more owls, yet he ignored them among the torrent of birds over breakfast. Were there really even fewer students overall in the Great Hall, or was that just me? Maybe people were just too busy cramming for their own good.

At flight club, a lot of the students wanted to play with Bludgers. I wasn't sure that would be a good idea—they were mostly third- and fourth-years—but came up with a new idea; people would take turns tossing the soft balls towards each other, and the others would hit them in the air with the Beaters' bats. There were significantly more bats than kids, so the lines got long and the kids got restless, but their excitement to hit the balls farther than their classmates' outweighed their impatience. A sixth-year hit one the longest distance, almost halfway from one set of goalposts to the other. I gave her a Chocolate Frog.

When I finally caught up with Podmore, it wasn't outside or even in the library, just passing in the hallways. He didn't see me.

I figured I had to try. "Er, hello."

For a change, he didn't run away or shuffle off with his head down. Instead, he just smiled at me. "Hi!"

"Do you want to take your test today?"

"No," he said, still grinning. "And I'm not going to want to take it again, so you can stop asking."

"You're right," I said, trying to sound upbeat as well. "I can stop asking. But I'd prefer to stop because you've passed the test."

"Well, I'm not gonna," he said, "and if you were gonna call the Carrows on me you'd have done it by now, so there's nothing you can do to me. Anyway, I'll see you." And with that, he took off calmly down the hall.

Call the Carrows on him? Flying tests weren't required for passing to the next year, and since it sounded like they cast Unforgivable Curses on students, there's no way I would have gone to them about that kind of thing. It almost sounded like he was praising me for not doing something I'd never considered, which felt a little bit like overkill, but I wasn't going to push it.

The infuriating thing was, he was right. There really wasn't anything I could do for him—well, except dock house points, but it didn't even feel like he was breaking rules or anything. He  _did_  see me around, giving cheeky grins when he noticed me. At least he was smiling, which was a change—he really had been happy when he'd first gotten on a broom, but was pretty sulky ever since.

I kept thinking of flight club as my real job, even though it really wasn't—but, short of the fourteen players involved, no one was able to muster much excitement for the forthcoming Slytherin-Hufflepuff match for the glory of third place out of four. So, I thought up new games—the Beaters' bats idea had gone over well, so kids paired off in twos and took turns hitting the balls back and forth to each other. First on the ground, then a couple kids tried in the air, over longer and longer distances. It got to be a very good thing that we hadn't used the actual Bludgers.

On the plus side, having kids get pelted and knocked off their broom kept the line moving quickly. There really weren't that many bats, even if the crowds were thinner.

Wednesday was my patrol night. Again working on the principle of "better to have it but not need it" than the other way around, I brought a library book that time. It claimed to be information leaked from Unspeakables, but looked like a lot of rubbish—what would the Department of Mysteries want with models of planets floating around, when you could walk right into Diagon Alley and pick them up there? Still, it was old enough that it seemed likely to have information from Brady Curtis' era, so it was worth a shot.

And, once again, I didn't have time to read it. Nothing happening in the castle that I could tell. By that point things had calmed down and I was starting from the bottom again. When I reached the hallway I'd camped out in a few months before, I paused, half-convinced I was hearing voices. The tapestry seemed to sway forwards a little, then recede.

"Hello?" I tried to call, but barely any sound came out. Not because I'd been cursed or anything, just couldn't bring myself to yell. It was stupid, I told myself, I'd just psyched myself out.

Interest in Beaters' bats continued unabated at flight club. A few kids had picked up how to toss the balls and swing the bats at them, without needing someone else to throw to them, and were now attempting to see who could hit one through a goalpost from the farthest distance. As this all but required the ability to fly no-handed, unless they found someone to throw to them, only the most agile were able to manage at all, and most of them couldn't get very far out. Meanwhile, the others kept practicing playing catch on a broom. They seemed to be into it—maybe they could come up with more games on their own. And if it kept going year after year, then it'd be a real extracurricular thing, the kids leading it themselves.

Of course, then I'd have even less of an actual job.


	36. No Time Limit

On Friday, May 1, 1998, I went flying.

I'd found a charm scribbled in an old Quidditch book that purported to double your broomstick's speed, but warned that you had to fly a lot on the broom to get it into shape. I wasn't sure which of the school brooms I'd ridden most, so I settled on my old (well, new) Comet. It was a good thing I hadn't gone too far back—wouldn't want to predate the Comet 310 entirely!

Okay, "settled" on it was kind of a stretch. It was still riding funny, but hey, that was enough.

It was about midmorning when someone else joined me. "Hello? Could I—oh! Excuse me, Professor."

I nodded in acknowledgment of Burke the announcer, riding his Firebolt out towards the pitch.

"Mind if I practice?"

"Of course not, go ahead."

With that, he began shooting a practice Quaffle through hoop after hoop. I rode, but more slowly, keeping an eye on his form. He was good, but on his own there was no way for him to really show off his form like he had against Ravenclaw. Probably good enough to play professionally, but I didn't remember his name from the league. But maybe he was young, and still had lots of time.

"Practicing for tomorrow?" I asked, as I flew another lap.

He nodded. "And yourself?"

I laughed. "You could say that."

"Your broom veers off-course." Okay, on second thought, maybe it was a good thing he wasn't that talkative as a commentator—I think I'd have gotten pretty annoyed if he'd been criticizing _my_ form.

"I know. I won't be riding this one tomorrow."

"Good."

I rode, and he shot, for a while more, until I got hungry. "You understand the game very well," I had to point out as I left—sure, there was really nothing I could do about  _Hitchens'_  commentary, but his at least stood a chance of improving. "That game against Ravenclaw, you played excellently."

His face lit up; then, a little embarrassed, he said, "Thank you."

"When you're commentating, feel free to...add a little more insight, help everyone else follow what's going on."

Then he looked offended, and made no effort to mask his emotions. "My job's not to help everyone else!"

"Is it? I'm new here. What is your job?"

"To...commen...tate. Well, it's for people who don't know the game very well, they don't care if I don't say that much."

"It never hurts, is all I'm saying."

"Of course it hurts! It hurts me if the other teams who are going to play Ravenclaw next pick up on something I said! You understand, don't you?"

"Yeah," I said.

I did understand. Quidditch is important.

After lunch, I thought about going back and casting the charms right away—surely that had to be enough, I'd ridden that broom hours upon hours for practice. Although, technically, most of those practices hadn't happened yet, so maybe they wouldn't work. But as I was standing around, trying to make up my mind, Bright showed up.

"Oh. Hi, Mr. Wood," she said. "I...I guess I'm ready. But after class, I have History of Magic now."

"Ready?" I repeated.

"To take my test. Unless it's too late, I really don't mind—"

"No, that's wonderful! Come out whenever you're ready!" I tried not to sound  _too_  eager. It must have worked, because she just nodded and left.

So then I pretty much had to go back to the pitch and wait. I flew and flew, subconsciously compensating for the veering, and really zoned out. To the point where it was just the flying, that mattered, not the broom, not even the person on it. Oliver, Fergus, I could have been anyone.

I guess at some point Burke went inside because I remember thinking it would have been awkward for Bright to take her test with him still there, but by the time she showed up, he was gone. "Okay," I said, trying to sound encouraging.

"No time limit, right? Just as slow as I want?"

"Of course."

"Okay."

She took off tentatively, not getting off to as fast a start as she usually did, and hovered low for a while, then slowly climbed a bit higher before plateauing. She coasted forward, weaving side to side quite a lot but never dipping up and down.

At the end of the pitch, she gained a little altitude. Maybe it was so she'd have room to drop on the turn, because she looked very unsteady there, but she stayed on the broom and came back. Then the second lap, by which time I was kind of holding my breath, but she got through. Very slowly on the outgoing trip, more quickly and confidently on the way back, but she did it.

"Well done!" I said. "Now get Damian Podmore out here, eh?"

"Damian doesn't like flying. He's scared he'll get hurt like his mom."

"Excuse me?" Podmore sounded like an old Pureblood name, but I didn't know any members off the top of my head.

"His mom got hurt. A while back. So he's kind of nervous now."

"Oh." Well, that made sense. "Thanks for letting me know."

She shrugged coolly. "By the way, I'm  _not_  coming to your broom thing."

Did she mean flight club? "That's fine."

She left—I was about to follow and sign her form, before I remembered I had a spell to test. Tapping the end of the broom three times quickly with my wand, I shouted, "Celereo!"

There was a brief smell of smoke, and then—nothing. I took off on it, just to see what it would do—and found myself clutching the top end and kicking at the ground as the bottom end snapped off entirely.

Sighing, I picked up the broken halves and headed for the castle before I forgot to sign off Bright's paperwork. Once I'd slipped that under the Headmaster's door, I went to get a late dinner.

Twenty-eight out of twenty-nine first years passed. That wasn't that bad, particularly if Podmore had extenuating circumstances.

I tried casting Reparo on my broom, once I got back up to my room. It seemed to put the pieces back together, although given how poorly it had flown before I wasn't too confident. I hadn't planned to use it the next day anyway, and that certainly did nothing to change my plans.

Slytherin versus Hufflepuff...probably a one-sided win for the former, at least on paper, though given how bad their Seeking had been maybe not. The final was what we were all really looking forward to, of course. Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw. They would be tied for first going into the last game of the season, both with two wins and goal differentials of two hundred ninety. Ravenclaw had two decent victories, while the thumping Gryffindor had delivered Hufflepuff canceled out how close they'd been against Slytherin.

Yes, I yawned, that would be a good game, winner take all...but first came Slytherin-Hufflepuff, and before that, I needed sleep.


	37. Buying Time

" _Oliver, are you okay?"_

_Something was wrong. "Do I look like I'm okay?"_

" _No. You look like you fell off your broom."_

" _I haven't fallen off my broom. Look! I'm still holding it." That was important. Couldn't they see?_

" _Yeah, okay. We should still get you to St. Mungo's. Can you stand?"_

" _I...ow. Ow. No."_

" _It's okay. Stay calm, Oliver, we're gonna get you to the hospital."_

_No. No, they couldn't call me by my real name. That wasn't safe. "Stop that."_

" _Stop what? Let's...okay, we'll Side-Along Apparate you, all right? It's probably not safe to move him."_

_And then, from a distance, "Fergus." That was safer. A woman's voice. Parker? "Fergus, get up, now."_

_Didn't she know I couldn't move? And since when had she been back in Britain?_

"Fergus! Get up,  _now_!"

A jet of cold air raced past my face.

It's true. Even if you've only been asleep, like, half an hour, you really remember your dreams better when you're woken up in the middle of them.

"Professor McGonagall?" I was too tired to remember to call her Minerva.

"Fergus. Get up. Death Eaters are preparing to attack the school."

"Death Eaters?" I gaped. Sure, the Week of Shadows was due to start pretty soon—but there was definitely nothing about an attack on Hogwarts. "That's impossible."

"More so than they already have," she sighed. " _Get. Up._ And join me at the staff table in the Great Hall."

"I can't fight Death Eaters! I'm just a—flying...teacher."

"Your job is to take care of the children of Hogwarts. Consider this in the category of "other tasks as assigned.""

I blinked. "But I can't—"

"We'll see about that when the time comes, now get out of bed."

"Okay, okay." I wasn't scared of fighting, really. Just losing. I'd wanted to make a difference, sure, but there was a reason I'd never joined the resistance the first time around. Well. Several.

Death Eaters. At Hogwarts. How had  _that_  happened?

I moved as quickly as I could, downing the rest of some leftover coffee to stay awake, since McGonagall was already looking pretty annoyed with me. When I caught up to her, she gave me a once-over before informing me, "Fergus, you're in your pajamas."

"Didn't feel the need to waste time on changing clothes, I doubt the Death Eaters are going to care. I put on shoes, though, don't think it'll be safe to walk if there's debris or anything on the floor."

"Your foresight is admirable," she said drily. "Come along."

All the teachers were there at the platform in the back of the Great Hall, bar our Headmaster and Deputy Heads. Even Hooke had shown up. There were also a bunch of people I didn't recognize, with some of the Weasleys mixed in, and a man who might have been a professor when I was an older student—he looked familiar but I hadn't had him for anything. Hopefully they were the resistance. Hopefully the Weasleys didn't ask me too many question.

"...have the prefects oversee evacuation," someone was saying.

"Make the fifth years do it, most of the sixth years are of age—they might want to stay."

"Our job is buying time, we need to be able to cast protective spells from..."

"...will want to go into the grounds."

Was I supposed to be contributing? I had no idea how to fight a battle, and even my knowledge from the future wasn't very helpful. Surely if there had been an attack on Hogwarts people would _know_. And Harry Potter wasn't there, so it wasn't like I could suggest protecting him. Unless...

"You...if the Death Eaters are fighting...Bellatrix..." What was her real name? There'd been a time before she was the Silvermaiden, and this was actually  _it_. "She's a dangerous one, if she's killed, the Dark Lord is in trouble."

"The Dark Lord?" said George Weasley. Shoot. "Whose side are you on?"

"Hogwarts'," I said. "Please, if you—"

"We are all aware that Bellatrix Lestrange is a threat," said McGonagall, "but I assure you all that Fergus is not." Lestrange. That was it. "Filius, if you would continue..."

They kept talking and talking. I still knew nothing about battle plans, but it sounded like some people were going up to the towers, and some were going out onto the grounds, and some were staying in the passageways.

"Do we have enough people for that?" asked Professor Trelawney.

"We will," the professorial-looking newcomer smiled. "Together, we are strong...even split into seven groups."

"Should we split up now?" asked Professor Sinistra.

"Wait," said McGonagall. "The students will be here soon."

The Great Hall was filling up, but it looked like I still had a minute, so I waved professor McGonagall aside. "Er. Minerva. You...noticed that I didn't have my day clothes on."

"Yes, and I would prefer not to be reminded of the point."

"Sorry," I said hastily. "It's just...I  _also_  left my identification card in my room."

"The Death Eaters no longer care about your Blood Status!"

"I know! But..." I was scared to bring it up, but I had to do it. Not for myself—I'd kind of gotten caught up in the moment, past the fear of being hurt—but for those I cared about. "Look. If the Death Eaters destroy Hogwarts and kill us all, I doubt they'll care enough to track down my card. But if...if anything happens to me, and you're still around, you can't go tell Brian Wood about me, okay?"

"Of course."

"Do you understand what I'm saying? You can't tell him he had an illegitimate son he never knew, because..."  _Because it wouldn't do him any good to know, it would only cause him grief, give him regrets, something I wouldn't wish on anyone._  "Because it's a lie."

"I promise you, whatever happens here, I will not speak of you to him or his family." She nodded at the others. "Nor will any of my fellows."

Was she mad? It was great to hear, but I didn't want to follow her into battle if she was going to be this thick. "You understand? Everything on that identification card is a lie?"

"Of course," she repeated. "We've known all along."


	38. Having the Time

I blinked. It could not be happening. The attack on Hogwarts, being dragged out of bed, standing here at 11:25 in my pajamas, that I could believe.

But  _that_?

"You  _knew_?"

"We've been through this before, we staff," she said. "We knew what to look for. Not drinking our alcohol, preferring your own drinks...yes, very transparent of you."

 _What_? Okay, so I was a teetotaler. What did that have to do with anything?

"I taught Oliver Wood for seven years," she smiled. "That's not his half-brother's face you have on. It's his face. Except, of course...you have longer hair."

Yeah. Yeah, I did have longer hair than the Oliver she knew. I'd also been around for three more years.

"I must admit, I'm surprised that he did it. He never struck me as the type to get too involved in anything beyond Quidditch—though a few locks of hair aren't too much to spare for a friend."

What the  _heck_?

Before I could ask what alcohol and hair had to do with me being a time-traveller, she looked around and saw that the room had stopped filling up. Nodding at me, she walked to the front of the platform.

"Good evening," she said coolly. "Please remain calm and pay very close attention to me. Voldemort and his Death Eaters are planning a massive attack on the school. The safest place for all of you is outside. Do not move now!" she called, as there was a flurry of motion from one of the tables. "Stay with your other classmates, and you will move towards the evacuation point together. Evacuation will be overseen by Mr. Filch and Madame Pomfrey. Prefects, when I give the word, you will organize your House and take your charges in orderly fashion to the evacuation point."

One of the kids stood up at the Hufflepuff table and yelled, "And what if we want to stay and fight?" People actually clapped for him. Mental, but no more so than I was.

McGonagall answered a few more questions, and then—a high, calm voice echoed out of the walls.

"Give me Harry Potter." Yes. Yes, that was exactly what Voldemort wanted. Surely he couldn't take a week to find and kill?

"But he's there!" squealed a Slyterin. "Potter's there. Someone grab him!"

Potter was  _here_? What was he doing? He needed to get out!

But he showed no sign of doing so. Instead, McGonagall told the students to begin evacuating. I hoped Fred and George Weasley had found a really great secret passage, because they were too young to Apparate and the Floo Network was barely functional.

A tall wizard began explaining where people would go. I really didn't care, as long as I kept close to the teachers and far from people who'd recognize me. Although I guess it didn't matter, as McGonagall seemed to know that I was pretending. Even if she'd got a bunch of the details wrong. Across the hall, I heard McGonagall yell "Go, Potter, go!" It wasn't a cheer.

Yeah, that was him all right. Probably. He did leave, which was probably for the best.

The seven leaders (well, eight, but Fred and George were so similar they counted as one) spread out and others joined them—I got the feeling the groups ought to be of roughly equal size. I didn't want to deal with the Weasley twins again, nor their father, nor McGonagall if she was going to Gryffindor Tower—people there might recognize me. Although if all the students were leaving...

Lots of current students followed Fred and George. A pair of twin girls wanted to go to Gryffindor, no Ravenclaw, no Gryffindor, no Ravenclaw, no, the Astronomy tower. I finally decided to follow Flitwick to Ravenclaw tower. We were joined by Professor Vector, a very old man in a silly purple wizard's hat, and several Ravenclaw students; fortunately, Luna from the hallways went out to the grounds.

"You need an extra robe?" someone volunteered as we walked up. I guess I must have been shivering. Not because I was cold, though.

"I'm fine," I said. "Well. No, I'm not  _fine_  at all. But I don't think I need an extra robe."

"Okay," he smiled, "just checking."

We climbed the stairs. Ravenclaw Tower didn't have a portrait or anything guarding it, just an eagle knocker who asked, "Do you have the time?"

"There's no need to sound so irritated," snapped the man in the hat. If that was its irritated voice, I wanted to hear it on a good day—it had sounded quite melodic. "It's almost midnight, let us in."

"You need to answer the question to get into the common room," said one of the kids. "Usually it's just a riddle, it must be really annoyed now."

"We don't have the time," Vector called out. "The time has us."

"For now, anyway," I muttered.

Flitwick turned to look at me, but the eagle just said, "Good enough," and let us in.

It was a very pretty room. There were enormous windows, looking out over the mountains—a beautiful place to fly past. I got a chance to get a closer look than I really wanted to the windows, as Flitwick waved us over.

"If you'll all repeat after me, and do watch my wand movements.  _Protego Horribillis!_ "

I didn't really want to do anything too horrible, but copied Flitwick as best I could. There was no way to know if my spells were having any effect, though.

"Be ready to attack who, or  _what_ ever you see approaching," he said. " _Descendo_ and  _Deprimo_ should work, as long as your targets are still outside." Targets. I was going to be cursing people. "If they should get inside... _Impedimenta, Stupefy_ , cast the Conjunctivitis Curse if you don't know anything else."

"We know  _Stupefy_ and  _Impedimenta_!" said the boy who'd offered me a robe. He could speak for himself, as far as I was concerned.

"Very good," said Flitwick.

"Er. Professor?" I stammered. "How're we supposed to, er, cast spells through the window?"

He tapped the window with his wand, silently mouthing something. "This should work."

"Okay. Good." Well. Kind of. I was in no hurry to cast anything, but maybe I'd have to.

We looked out the window, silently. It must not have been very long, but for me it felt like a while. Then, out of the darkness, a green flash. Maybe. Had the others seen it too?

A few more bursts of color, red and yellow, and we looked at each other with no need to speak. The battle was upon us.


	39. Of Glass and Giants

"Stay calm," said Flitwick. I was breathing nervously, but there was nothing to cast yet. "Your place is in here, others can handle the outside. Wait until you see motion out the window, then aim."

We waited, growing more nervous by the second but seeing little. Then suddenly the room shook, and a statue of a witch trembled.

"Traitors?" gasped the man with the hat. "Within Hogwarts?"

"More likely a curse from outside," said Flitwick, now tracing an intricate incantation in the air with his wand. "I will try to keep things stable, but you must be prepared for anything."

There were more flashes of light, too brief to let me make out what was going on. Then, one of the students yelled "D-d-d-"

" _Descendo!_ " finished another, and there was a low, quiet, moan.

"It's giants," said the hat man. "They can stand up to our Stunning Spells."

"But they can't be that agile climbers," said Flitwick, still waving his wand. " _Descendo_ and  _Deprimo_ , then."

"Is that going to work," a girl stammered, "if they can knock us down from below?"

"We'll have time to worry about that later," said Flitwick. "Continue on."

The hat man glanced down. "There are people below. Can we try casting spells all the way down?"

"Probably shouldn't," a student answered, "we don't know who's who."

I waited, and waited, and then saw what looked like a hand too high for comfort. I blinked, and it was still there. " _Descendo_ ," I screamed, and it seemed to give way...

"That's the spirit!" said Flitwick, as the floor below us shook. I held my ground as best I could; there was more and more flickering from below, and pretty soon we were all taking turns casting " _Descendo_ " or reinforcing Flitwick's gigantic Shield Charms.

The castle shook again, that time worse, and a thin layer of dark blue dust fluttered down from the ceiling. Below us, the light was growing more insistent yet, and from outside came a fading sound halfway between a scream and a groan. Maybe a gargoyle falling.

Flitwick had joined us at the window. For a moment, it felt like the threat was dropping off. Had we gotten rid of them all? There was silence for a few moments, and the lights below us disappeared.

Flitwick started casting  _Protego Horribillis_ again, and then we heard what sounded like a very loud explosion coming from below.

We waited still—there was nothing from outside, but this was where we were supposed to be, wasn't it? Then, a silver image of a cat bounded into the room. More magic from outside, but somehow I felt it was a good sign.

"Filius," it said—in McGonagall's voice! "The giants have breached the north battlements. Wait five minutes, and if you do not see Acromantulas approaching, make your way to the Astronomy Tower and defend Sprout's group." Then it faded.

Pretty much everyone seemed to take this in stride. I didn't know what it was, but decided not to push the issue.

I didn't have a watch, obviously, and I felt like five minutes had gone by, but no one was moving. Then Flitwick flinched, gasping for the first time. " _Descendo!_ "

We all cast the charm hastily. There were way too many legs on the side of the walls. "No use trying the Impediment Jinx unless they get inside, and in that case, you're better off running," said Flitwick. " _Deprimo_!"

Again and again. Once, two of the students sent spiders crashing into each other and they both tumbled, but there were still more. Where'd  _they_ come from?

No time to wonder. Just cast. These spells didn't make light, so it was difficult to tell if they were doing anything, but on the other hand, none of the spiders had broken though. We kept casting, and they kept toppling, but a few only fell a little bit and started climbing again. The castle might have been shaking around us, but at that point we didn't care.

Then, the sound of glass breaking, and the poke of a hairy leg.

"Get back," Flitwick roared, jumping forward more courageously than seemed quite necessary for a man of his size. But with a green flash, it stopped twitching, and after a red flash, it fell away.

"Can we not just wait for you to do all of them in?" I asked.

"Only if they do us the favor of coming one at a time," he muttered.

Two boys, as well as a girl and the dark-haired man, were getting better at synchronizing their spells, which seemed to actually injure the spiders as opposed to just knocking them down. I tried lining up with Flitwick, but couldn't muster anything really powerful.

And then, the window shattered. Flitwick began firing Killing Curses into the night, while yelling at the rest of us to get back. We bolted for the door, and I watched the students file out the door. Was the boy who had offered me a robe still there? I couldn't see him.

"...can't blow up the tower!" the man with the hat was yelling. "That'll just leave them a  _clear_  path to get in."

"There's something in that," sighed Flitwick, and together they bolted after us.

At that point, a gigantic statue that looked like a chess knight appeared, which Flitwick gladly let in. Better it than us, I figured.

"To the Astronomy Tower," called Flitwick, "follow me."

We ran, and I was glad for my shoes—there was debris of all sorts on the ground. But we never even got into the tower; an enormous portrait told us that Sprout and the others had left and ordered everyone to stay away. A child's body lay on the ground—well, she must have been of age, but I thought of them all as children.

"Get downstairs," said Flitwick, "and do whatever you can."

"Mind the spiders," volunteered the portrait.

"We've tried," said Flitwick.


	40. Of Shadows and Slaughter

Where were we supposed to go? Downstairs. Okay. I could handle downstairs.

Mind the spiders. I would be only too glad to stay out of their way, and at least on the level where we were, I didn't see any. The castle kept shaking once in a while, and portraits dashed through frames, but I couldn't tell where the actual fighting was going on.

A huge suit of armor ran past us, and we could make out screams from where he'd come from. I paused, then followed Flitwick and most of the students that way, while the hat man and the girl he'd been fighting alongside turned in another direction. No, we definitely did not have as many students as we started with. But it felt like there was nothing to be done.

We rounded another corner and found ourselves in a hallway that looked like it had just been vacated. The portraits were cautiously poking their heads back in, and blood had been smeared across the floor. There were a couple bodies lying there—a Death Eater (it really helped that they wore those stupid hoods, otherwise it'd be tough to know who to fight—I didn't recognize a lot of the resistance people that had shown up), and a girl I thought might have been one of the bickering twins. Were they the same pair I'd had trouble telling apart at flight club that one day?

In the distance, I saw a terrified-looking man who might have been one of the Weasley brothers. As we walked forward, two more students passed us, supporting a third between them. The middle one could barely walk, but at least he was alive.

How many kids were even left at the school? If all the classes were the same size, there could maybe be thirty seventh-years and not many more than twenty sixth-years old enough to stay. Cut out the Slytherins and the others who had evacuated, and we were looking at less than forty kids, total...but maybe some of the Muggle-borns were back with the resistance. Potter certainly was.

Another corner rounded, another dead child. This one looked nothing like seventeen. Okay, so maybe there were some other kids too, but if they were that small they'd just be dragon fodder.

The students we were running with split off, maybe they'd seen something we hadn't—I was just following Flitwick, who seemed to know what he was doing.

"Behind you!" called a portrait, whose frame had been shattered and who was seeking refuge in the upper-left corner. Flitwick, who was a few steps ahead of me, whirled around to see what I'd just noticed—another giant spider approaching from an oncoming hallway. " _Stupefy_!" Flitwick bellowed, and I tried mimicking the charm. "On two," he mouthed. "One, two,  _Stupefy!_ "

The spider wavered from side to side. I clenched my wand even more tightly as if it would make something happen; then, the spider fell down and rolled over. I was afraid it would crush Flitwick, but thought I saw him jump out of the way in time.

The spider had rolled to come between us, so I took off in the direction it had come from. There were a lot more kids than I expected, many running, plenty dueling, and too many unable to do anything at all. Either they'd all wound up in the same hallway, or underage kids had snuck in, or...What did it matter?

More to the point, what had happened? I desperately tried to come up with everything I knew about the Week of Shadows, but the entire point had been that no one seemed to know what was really going on. The Ministry almost shut down. Rumors everywhere, but nothing of substance until a week from now. It just wasn't possible that there would be an attack on Hogwarts and no one would  _know_.

So, this was what I'd wanted. I'd changed history, somehow—or someone else had. How was I to know there weren't any other time-travellers bumping around?

I ran into the entrance hall, raising my wand to curse a Death Eater who was facing the other way, but he (or maybe she, could've been Bellatrix Whatserface for all I knew) jumped out of the way before the spell hit the door harmlessly. For a minute I was annoyed and confused at this eyes-in-the-back-of-the hood thing, but then realized why; the door burst open, even more giant spiders crawled in, and we scattered.

I ran backwards, keeping my eyes on the spiders and leaping over the Slytherin emeralds. As I dodged a curse, I tried to imagine what would have happened if I had never taken the job. Someone else probably would've. All the flying lessons would have been given, and all the Quidditch matches refereed—well. Not all of them. The odds that they'd fit Slytherin-Hufflepuff in today were looking less and less good.

Flight club might never have started, so maybe Weasley wouldn't have had the chance to talk to all of her friends. But she could've found a way, probably. I mean, clearly not,  _something_  had happened.

Someone else would have patrolled the corridors. Or  _not_  patrolled the corridors, just stuck to the usual schedule. Someone, perhaps, who'd have turned over more kids to the Carrows? Or never cast the Sticking Charm that night in February?

I'd thought I'd been doing a good thing. Protecting the kids—Dumbledore's Army—from whatever the bathroom lugs were planning. A scream from behind me and another body falling to the floor.

I hadn't meant to save them for a  _slaughter_.

I'd changed history. Or someone had. It didn't matter. What  _did_  matter was that things were going to play out differently. So the world I remembered—the world I'd come from—would probably never exist.

And  _that_  meant that, win or lose, I could never go home.

I leaned against a wall, figuring I was out of reach for the spiders. I felt pretty sorry for myself.

But then, just when I thought things couldn't get any worse,  _he_  appeared.


	41. Quidditch Instincts

No. No.  _That_  couldn't possibly be happening.

I snuck along the side wall, keeping as quiet as I could. I'd just have to leave the room and get somewhere else, there couldn't have been any shortage of spiders to kill off.

A Death Eater charged in. I glanced at him, then did a double-take—he didn't even have a wand! Well, that could have explained why he was in a hurry to get somewhere else.

But while I was gaping, and really hoping that the room's first occupant didn't recognize me, the Death Eater pointed at me and twisted his hands.

A second too late, I realized that he'd done wandless magic. But by that time, my wand was sailing across the room, and into his hands.

Great. Now I was  _wandless_ , and  _couldn't_ leave him if I was to have any hope of getting my wand back. At the same time, I really didn't want to stay put.

Luckily, sort of, the other man now realized he was facing an  _armed_ threat, and decided to do something about it. " _Stupefy!_ " he roared.

The Death Eater leapt and turned around. I tried to shrink even farther out of view. Another " _Stupefy!_ " rang out, just as the Death Eater cast a curse of his own. A beam of gold light issued out of my wand. A beam of red light came out of...

well, my wand.

Because standing there, across the room from the Death Eater, was  _me_. The 1998 version.

What was he doing there? Had he patched things up with Angelina and the Weasleys after all? Why had he willing to risk a much more interesting career than mine to fight in a battle he was no better prepared to fight than me?

Would he please disarm the Death Eater so I could get my wand back?

Chestnut faced chestnut. And then, possibly the weirdest thing since...well, over two years in the future, but that's beside the point, happened.

The beams of light connected, and at the point where they did, a bright point of white light appeared. Out from it, light skipped and hopped in every color imaginable and a few that you can't really imagine, they just fell to the ground between the young me and the Death Eater. The dot itself seemed to shiver from side to side, while more and more beams sprung from it.

The Death Eater turned his head as if listening for something, but all was silent. Until he started muttering. "It can't be...this is...where did you get  _that_?"

Oliver paused a moment, opening his mouth and thinking it over, before answering, "Ollivander's."

"Insolent boy," he whispered. " _When_  did you get it?"

Now more confused—I could only hope he hadn't seen me—he answered, "Eleven years ago?"

"You are meddling with Dark Magic...Put your wand down."

"What do  _you_ have against Dark Magic?" he said. "And, anyway, I think it's you who should put my wand down, it looks a lot like mine, doesn't it?"

"You do not know what you are tampering with—what you have already broken. I warn you in good faith,  _put your wand down_." Their wand arms were both shaking a little by then.

And then, I heard footsteps from the door I came in. It sounded like more than one person, but only one Death Eater walked in the door. Luckily, he didn't see me, as without a wand I was a pretty easy target.

He did not, however, fail to take notice of the scene in the middle of the room—Oliver and the Death Eater, identical wands sending beams of light in Gryffindor red and gold at each other, while magical lines of every color spread out on each side.

He raised his wand, aimed at Oliver, and glanced at his counterpart, who gave a tiny nod. Oliver must have noticed the nod, because he pursed his lips slightly, still fixated on that ball of light.

Then, the Death Eater fired a curse at Oliver's unprotected back.

Now, if I had had time to sit down and list the pros and cons of each possible action, my list might have gone something like this.  _On the one hand, even if this spell misses, the new guy is not bogged down in some weird wand effects, and can easily shoot at Oliver again. On the other hand, I thought I heard multiple sets of footsteps outside, so maybe someone else is coming that this Death Eater will need to deal with. On the first hand, I don't have a wand. So I'm pretty useless unless somehow the first Death Eater gets disarmed. Moreover, I am a time-traveller from what is now shaping up to be another world entirely. Even if I_ could _get back there, which now seems quite impossible, I'm not sure I'd like to—I think I'd rather have a world where the Death Eaters are defeated. The world that_ this _version of me has somehow found it in himself to fight for. He's not a time-traveller at all, and he isn't going to grow into me because I'd remember this battle, which I don't. This is his world. He belongs here._

Of course, if I had time to sit down and make a list, the curse would have hit him before I'd made up my mind.

But I think I still would have done the same thing.

My Quidditch instincts propelled me into the path of the curse. The Death Eater gaped and, as I'd feared, reached to fire off another curse. But before he could get it out, someone cast a jinx at him, and he whirled to duel whoever it was.

I caught a glimpse of Luna, who glanced at the first Death Eater, who was by then saying something I was in too much pain to make out, at Oliver, who was still facing the first Death Eater and barely knew what was going on, and at me, writhing in a pool of my own blood with a horrendous pain in my stomach, before she wandered off without a word, still dueling the second Death Eater.

The first one must have said something, because Oliver was now speaking. "No," he said. "I don't know who you are, or where you got that wand, or what you're doing here, but I don't care. If you're going to keep doing what you're doing, locking people out of school—and of Quidditch—and of the whole magical world, just because of who their parents were—then it is  _you who don't belong_."

I'd told my Quidditch class once that lots of really important magic came down to will. That was what it looked like. Because as the other version of me stood there, his arm trembling but unyielding, the white ball began to fall down the gold beam the Death Eater had cast. The gold color was replaced by more of that piercingly bright white light, until it was all gone. Then the Death Eater began to look concerned.

The white light continued on, seemingly burning the wand itself away. When the light reached his hands, he looked pained, then dropped my wand entirely and ran off. There was a flash of light, and then my wand had disappeared completely, all the beams were gone, and Oliver stood alone.

Well, there went my hope of getting my wand back. Not that I felt like I could have stood up any time soon.

Oliver whirled around, catching sight of me and the gaping wound in my chest, and ran over. He cast a couple healing spells, but they didn't seem to help—I hadn't expected him to be very good, and that had been quite a dark curse.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

"No," I rasped. I couldn't tell him, didn't know how to find the words to explain. That I was him, and yet  _not—_ he didn't have to worry about growing up and turning into me, with both of us helpless. Better if he never knew.

I saw him glance down at his wand. No, no, he could not put it together.

"Who  _are_  you?" he repeated. " _Legilimens!_ "

No  _way_. There was no  _way_  he could be good enough at Legilimency to find out, now, I'd never gotten a chance to practice.

But had he?

For the second time in a matter of minutes, my Quidditch instincts came through again. Because what I was doing was a defense, of sorts—not the kind I could use my body for, I was past the point of being able to move anything. But somehow, my mind shot back, our wills—my will twice over, in a way—collided, and instead of him reaching into my mind, I saw  _his_.

I saw him gazing at a two-way mirror that Angelina, who had never given up on him, left behind. I saw him hearing that the battle was on. I saw him reuniting with Angelina, Fred, George—Katie and Alicia too, as nervous as he'd ever been but ready to make a stand. I saw further back, to memories we shared—he lifted the Quidditch Cup, on his last chance, and tears streamed down his face.

He was not me, just as I was not him—I'd seen his memories, his alone, and knew that his past was his own. And his future would be his own too, the future in the world where he belonged.

That would have to be enough. Leaning against the floor, I closed my eyes and let go.


End file.
